"She went deeper," said a cold male voice. "You feel it?"
"Yes," answered the other. "Her trail mixes with… something else."
They spoke Elyndor's language with a foreign accent. Eleanor pressed herself against a pillar, trembling, then resumed running, forcing herself not to look at anything around her—only the floor.
The two men advanced more slowly. She sensed it in the rhythm of their steps, in their controlled breathing.
"Don't stare at the walls too much," one muttered.
"Thanks for the advice," the other snapped. "I can feel what they want. And I don't like it."
There was something in the way they breathed—fear. Not fear of the princess. Fear of this place.
"The girl carries something," one of them said. "You saw it above? Three spells missed her at point-blank range."
"Probably a luck artifact. Royals love those trinkets. It won't last. Focus."
They kept talking, but she no longer understood the words. Sounds stretched, distorted. A hum filled the air—a vibration in her bones.
At the end of a long corridor, she reached the door.
And immediately knew it was no ordinary door.
Not because it was large—it wasn't. Nor because it was ornate—it wasn't. No carvings, no metal, no lock. It was… a surface.
A surface that refused to be described.
It was there—clearly there—but whenever she tried to observe it longer than a heartbeat, words dissolved. The material held too many colors and none, too many shapes and none, as if human eyes were not meant to perceive it.
And yet Eleanor felt drawn to it.
No voice called her. No spell tugged at her. It was more subtle. Like a buried memory. Like the idea that beyond this door lay something that would give meaning to everything else.
She took a step forward.
Her hand rose.
She did not remember deciding to do it.
Her fingers touched the surface.
It was as if time shattered.
Her thoughts accelerated, then slowed, then split. She saw herself as a child, then an old woman, then she was no longer herself but someone else, something else. Years unspooled like ribbons, forward, backward, all at once. Each heartbeat held a thousand.
She tried to pull her hand away.
She couldn't.
A sharp pain seared her palm, as if something were being carved into it with burning iron. She looked—or thought she looked—and saw—or thought she saw—a rune etching itself into her skin before fading.
The door vibrated.
A point of light appeared on its surface. Then two. Then an entire constellation, unlike any sky above Elyndor. The symbols on the walls glowed faintly in answer, as if something deep within the ruins were awakening.
"By the Gods…" one of the pursuing mages whispered as he reached the end of the corridor. "What did she do?"
They had no time to retreat.
The door opened.
Not like a human door. It didn't swing or slide. It simply… ceased to be. And in its place, for an instant shorter than a blink and longer than a lifetime, there was something else.
Eleanor did not truly see what lay beyond. Her mind refused. It skipped the moment the way one skips a sentence too complex in a book.
What she saw was the figure that stepped out.
Human—at first glance. Too human, almost. A slender body, slightly taller than average. Hands. Legs. A simple tunic of ancient, timeless fabric. Two thin, elegant horns curved backward from his temples like a crown of bone, framing dark hair.
His skin was pale blue, almost white, marked with tiny runes—like luminous scars, crisscrossing in intricate patterns.
But that was not what one noticed first.
It was his eyes.
Golden.
Not gold like a crown. Gold like sunlight seen too closely, as if fragments of day had been poured into them. They seemed impossibly deep, full of things that shouldn't fit into a single gaze.
The being inhaled deeply, as if breathing this world's air for the first time in ages. A smile spread across his lips.
A smile of satisfaction.
"Finally…" he murmured, his voice echoing faintly through the stone. "Air… time… all of this still exists."
His gaze fell upon Eleanor. His smile softened—without losing its strangeness.
"You."
She wanted to back away, but her legs trembled.
The two mages reacted very differently.
One choked out a curse. The other stepped back, hand over his mouth as if he might vomit. Their mana—bright and forceful only moments ago—shrivelled.
There was nothing left to draw on.
All the ambient mana had turned toward the newcomer.
As if the world awaited his command. As if mana itself belonged to him.
The mages tried to cast. Words on their tongues, gestures precise, talismans flashing for a heartbeat.
Nothing answered.
"Impossible…" one whispered. "He… he's taking everything…"
The being tilted his head, amused.
"You pull on strings that do not belong to you," he said calmly.
He turned back to Eleanor.
"You who opened the door… you who freed me… what do you desire?"
She understood the words but not fully their weight. Her mind was foggy, her body shaking. Only one thing was clear—sharp as glass in the dark: if these men reached her, she would die. Or worse.
She looked at them, then at him. Her voice cracked, throat dry.
"I… I want them to leave me alone… I want them to… disappear."
The mages turned pale.
"You foolish child," one hissed. "You don't know wh—"
They didn't finish.
The being simply lifted his hand.
Two bolts shot forth.
Not like Rethan's lightning—violent, thunderous. These were silent. Natural, almost. Two lines of pure light leapt from his palm and struck the mages in the heart.
There was no scream.
No struggle.
The men were flung against the wall like puppets with cut strings. Their bodies fell in oddly peaceful positions. Their eyes, wide open, reflected the golden glow for a heartbeat before dimming.
Eleanor stumbled back, horrified.
"I…"
But before she could say more, the being doubled over.
A violent spasm tore through him. He clutched his chest as if something inside were breaking. The runes on his skin flared, then extinguished one by one.
"Tch… too long…" he growled through clenched teeth. "The prison… the sealing… ah…"
He collapsed to his knees.
His body began to fall apart.
Skin cracked into thin dark lines, like ancient porcelain. In places it flaked away, revealing muscle and bone—and something else that should not exist within any living shape.
Eleanor let out a strangled cry.
"No… no, no, no…"
She didn't even know what she was rejecting. The sight filled her with a deep, instinctual fear—as if she were witnessing not a simple death, but the collapse of something essential.
"I will not… die like this…" the being snarled, voice warped by agony.
His golden eyes searched desperately. They settled on the two fresh corpses.
An idea. A decision.
He lifted what remained of his hand.
The bodies twitched. The mana clinging to them—the remnants of their lives, of their broken spells—rose like faint threads, drifting toward the dying being.
Eleanor wanted to look away, but her eyes stayed locked, horrified and captivated.
"Fragile bodies… humans…" he murmured. "But… better than nothing…"
He tried to weave something.
It did not go as intended.
The threads resisted. Twisted. Coiled. The being's alien essence refused to mold fully into such a narrow vessel. Instead of an adult form—noble, majestic—something else took shape.
A smaller silhouette.
Childlike proportions.
The being realized too late. His golden eyes widened—surprised, almost offended.
"…What?"
Then everything exploded into light.
For Eleanor, it was like someone blowing out a candle inside her skull. The world vanished instantly.
She collapsed.
In the silence that followed, two children lay unconscious on the cold stone.
One was a human princess.
The other… a mystery wearing the shape of a child.