Bani didn't breathe.
Frankly, doing so felt like a great way to invite a quick and messy execution. The moment his physical form dissolved into smoke, he felt it—the ruins *noticed*.
The air possessed the heavy, coppery aroma of ancient slaughter. The ugly pillar-runes were currently chugging the last remaining bits of ambient warmth straight out of his core like college students at an open bar. Even his shadow felt completely uncooperative, stretching out until it looked less like a silhouette and more like a lanky, depressed spider with attachment issues.
*Step. Pause. Step.*
The rhythm returned from behind the nearest rune-carved door.
Bani flowed along the floor like an annoyed patch of fog, slipping neatly through the uncomfortably tight crack beneath the wood.
Inside sat a circular chamber. Zero windows. Absolute, pitch-black illumination.
Standing dead-center with its back to him was one of *them*.
A skin-walker. But not the scrappy, desert-variety street thugs he was used to. This unit was an XL-model. Its limbs were uncomfortably long, bending at angles that violated several basic laws of orthopedic science. Its skin was gray and semi-translucent, with thick black veins pulsing underneath like cracks in a cheap windshield. It hadn't noticed him yet because it was currently hunched over the wall, dragging jagged, clawed fingers across the ancient masonry.
And it was *talking*.
Not in standard words, mind you. In frequencies. A low, bone-rattling hum that made Bani's teeth vibrate in his gums. It was the exact same layered, multi-tonal voice that had come out of the "young man" earlier.
Bani was faced with two distinct choices:
1. Fight, and die horribly while looking ridiculous.
2. Hide, and acquire free tactical knowledge.
Being a pragmatist with a deep-seated aversion to dying in a ditch, he chose option two.
However, smoke had two major flaws: it had a distinct smell of burnt magic, and it possessed a terrible silhouette.
Gritting his teeth, Bani reached down into the dusty, barren attic of his mana reserves and did something he had strictly promised his therapist (and his own common sense) he would never do again.
He let the shadow *wear* him.
The process felt like shoving a watermelon through a keyhole while a blacksmith repeatedly hammered your shinbones. Bones audibly shifted. His skin turned cold and gray. His limbs stretched out with loud, obnoxious *pops*, and his face slackened before pulling taut. Needle-like chitinous appendages sprouted from his back, perfectly mimicking the grotesque aesthetic of the creature standing ten feet away.
When the dust settled, Bani was no longer Bani.
He was an unmitigated abomination.
Granted, the transformation was a bit rushed. His breathing still sounded suspiciously human, and his heartbeat was currently hammering against his ribs like a panicked squirrel. But in this anti-magic zone where runes regularly devoured spells, nothing was going to sense a soul. They'd only see a shape.
The skin-walker suddenly pivoted.
Its faceless head tilted ninety degrees to the left. It stared at Bani for one agonizing, eternity-long second.
Then, completely unimpressed, it turned right back around to resume its finger-painting on the wall.
Bani exhaled a massive sigh of relief through gritted teeth. His garbage disguise had actually worked.
The Historical Lecture of Doom
The chamber wasn't a standard room. It was a giant, three-dimensional *history book*.
Every square inch of wall space was covered in those wretched, jagged runes. But these weren't static; they slowly rippled across the stone like dark ink dropped into a glass of water. Beneath them, carved with terrifying precision, were images.
A city. Gorgoroth in its prime.
Not the desolate ruins outside, but a bustling, terrifying metropolis. Towers of black stone scraped against a bruised dim sky. Citizens walked the streets with identical skins of human. And right in the center, slouching upon a throne made entirely of bleached bone, sat something completely formless—just a swirling, hostile void where a king ought to be.
Bani's new inhuman eyes—oversized and slightly bulging—picked up on the subtle details his normal vision would have missed.
The citizens down below weren't kneeling in prayer.
They were *feeding* the void.
People casually sliced open their palms, letting arterial blood and raw life-force pour into the empty air. And in return, the void handed them something horrifyingly practical:
*Silence.*
That was the true nature of the relic. The Mask wasn't a sword or a shield. It was a *contract*.
Gorgoroth hadn't been wiped out by an invading army or a natural disaster. The civilization had intentionally traded its very existence away. They wanted to become unseen, unheard, and completely untouchable—a ghost town tucked away where the gods couldn't find the receipt.
And it worked brilliantly.
Until the bill finally came due with compound interest.
The skin-walker let out a wet, raspy hiss. It dragged a razor-sharp claw straight down a particularly angry-looking rune, and the symbol let out a literal *scream*. It wasn't an audible noise, but a soundless psychic shriek that drilled straight into Bani's skull, nearly making him drop his disguise.
**"The Watcher returns,"** the layered frequency vibrated through the chamber. **"The debt remains unpaid."**
It wasn't talking to Bani.
It was talking to the *walls*.
A chilling wave of realization washed over him. The ruins weren't abandoned at all.
They were a glorified waiting room.
They were waiting for a sucker with shadow-tainted blood to walk in, sign the dotted line, and finish a transaction that started a millennium ago. That explained why the skin-walkers had hunted him, and why his shadow kept acting like it wanted to unionize.
Because he wasn't just a boy from a fallen city.
He was the *payment*.
Without warning, the skin-walker froze stiff. Its head snapped around to stare right at Bani again.
Bani didn't move a muscle. He didn't blink. He let the abomination's instincts take the wheel.
After three excruciating heartbeats, the creature turned away, walked over to the central altar, and pressed both hands firmly against the stonework.
The runes flared—not with a blinding flash of light, but with an intense, suffocating wave of *absence*.
With a deafening groan, stone ground against stone in the center of the floor.
A hidden compartment hissed open.
Resting on a velvet pillow of calcified bone sat the *Mask*.
Shadow given tangible form. It hovered between liquid and solid, lacking eyes, mouth, or features. It was a smooth, light-devouring surface that reflected absolutely nothing.
When Bani looked at it, he didn't see his own face.
Instead, he saw the desert sands. The cave collapse. The skin-walkers howling above. And right here, standing in this cursed room, wearing a dead monster's skin like a cheap halloween costume.
The skin-walker lunged its long, spindly arm toward the pedestal.
Bani moved first.
He didn't bother thinking. He just *became* the shadow.
His newly grown chitinous appendage shot forward like a crossbow bolt, slamming squarely into the skin-walker's back and pinning the creature against the stone wall with a sickening crunch. The monster shrieked, a sound like a blender full of gravel.
Ignoring it, Bani lunged forward and grabbed the Mask.
The moment his fingers wrapped around the edge, his core went dead silent.
It was freezing. Colder than the grave itself.
Simultaneously, every single jagged rune across every wall in the entire subterranean kingdom of Gorgoroth snapped dark.
Absolute, suffocating silence dropped over the ruins.
And then, from far, far beneath the deepest foundations of the dead city, something impossibly heavy, ancient, and exceedingly grumpy *woke up*.