Evan didn't stay near the village. Every instinct he possessed, honed by years of playing games where "abandoned" never actually meant empty, told him to put distance between himself and that silent library.
He retreated to the jagged rock formation he'd found earlier. He slumped against the shaded side of a boulder, chest heaving. The stone egg sat heavy in his lap, and the red book in his hands. He opened it carefully. The pages weren't paper; they felt like cured skin, cool and strangely flexible.
Halfway through, the text gave way to vivid, hand-drawn pictographs. The people depicted were clearly humanoid, but different. Their skin was rendered in a deep, sunbaked terracotta red, their limbs long and lean, built for the punishing heat of a world with twin suns. The drawings showed a modest life: simple stone dwellings and communal wells. They looked like a society that had mastered survival, but not industry.
Then, the recurring figure appeared.
In page after page, one warrior stood out. He was a head taller than the others, his frame thick with corded muscle. In every depiction, he was bathed in a strange, ethereal fire—wisps of light-colored flames that coiled around his wrists and ankles. He wore light leather armor that looked stitched from the hide of something formidable.
The drawings showed him entering the Labyrinth and returning to the cheers of the village. He was their champion. Their Legacy.
"A hero," Evan whispered, his thumb brushing the scorched edge of the page. "Or at least, he was."
A deep, tectonic shudder ripped through the rock formation, nearly knocking Evan from his perch. He scrambled to his feet, clutching the book and the egg, his eyes snapping toward the settlement.
The village was gone.
In its place, a pillar of flame had erupted—but it wasn't a chaotic wildfire. The fire rose in rhythmic, pulsing waves, expanding outward in a perfect, terrifying circle. The flames didn't flicker; they marched.
"No, no, no," Evan muttered, watching the fire line sweep across the sand toward him.
He braced for the heat, but as the flames washed over the rocks, they didn't burn his skin.
Then, the center of the village exploded.
From the ruins of the library, a colossal tree began to tear its way into the sky. It was a nightmare of biology. Roots as thick as building complexes heaved the earth aside. The trunk rose with impossible speed, a jagged, leafless spire that pierced the heavy crimson clouds. Its bark was a deep, bruised purple black, shot through with veins of glowing crimson that pulsed like a heartbeat.
The interface flickered into existence:
[LEGACY CHALLENGE INITIATED]
[Objective: Place the Artifact and Beast Egg on the Altar]
A sound tore through the air—a primal, soul-shredding yell that vibrated in Evan's marrow. It came from the base of the Great Tree, right where the library had been.
Evan's hands shook as he reached into his pack and pulled out his binoculars. He pressed them to his eyes, adjusting the focus until the base of the blood-red tree came into sharp relief.
His breath stopped.
The warrior from the book was there, but he was no longer the vibrant champion of the drawings. He was a horror of reanimation. His once-mighty frame was now a jagged skeleton draped in a layer of skin so thin it was translucent, stretched tight over bone like wet parchment. Stringy, necrotic muscle clung to his limbs, pulsing with the same sickly red light as the tree. The ethereal flames around his wrists and ankles had turned into searing, white-hot brands that hissed against his dry remains.
But he wasn't alone.
Surrounding the base of the tree were dozens of others. A small army of skeletons—the villagers—had clawed their way out of the scorched earth. They stood in a perfect, silent circle around their fallen hero, their empty sockets all turned toward the rock formation where Evan hid.
One hundred sets of white bone stood stark against the red sand, waiting.
Evan lowered the binoculars, his face pale.