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The mist rolled across the valley like the breath of a sleeping beast, veiling the world in a hush that seemed to stretch beyond sound itself. Ash stood still at the crest of the cracked stone ridge, where the trail behind him had disappeared into thick clouds, and the path ahead sloped into a strange, forbidden land.
Beneath his feet, the stones bore ancient marks—not etched with tools, but formed as if the earth itself had remembered a history it refused to speak aloud. Strange, arcane veins shimmered faintly in the ground—an old formation, long deactivated but not truly dead.
Ash's eyes narrowed.
This place wasn't marked on any maps the villagers kept. He was far from the outlying forest near Eastern Skyroot Province, where the herbs he'd been gathering had once grown freely. This place felt... older. Watching.
Zanab's voice cut through the stillness behind him. "You're walking into it again, aren't you?"
He turned. Her robes were dusted with mist, her hair tied up tighter than usual, and her lips pressed thin. "You followed me," Ash said, not accusing, but surprised.
"You disappeared without a word," she replied. "You didn't even leave your satchel behind this time."
Ash looked down. The satchel did indeed swing from his side, still stuffed with wild herbs and cracked scroll fragments. "I was drawn here."
Zanab approached him, stepping cautiously between stones as if the ground itself could shift at any moment. "Is it… the same dream again?"
Ash didn't answer immediately. His gaze drifted toward the horizon, where mountains bent unnaturally, almost as if bowing toward a point deeper in the valley. The wind carried a whisper, a language not made for mortal tongues. But Ash was beginning to understand pieces of it.
"They're not dreams anymore," he murmured. "They're memories. Not mine, but—something left behind. A residue."
Zanab looked shaken but kept her composure. "And it led you here?"
"Yes. This land once belonged to an order… not of this age. Something ancient." Ash knelt, brushing his fingers over the dusty glyphs embedded in the stone. "There was a war here, but it was buried so deep no record remains. Not in the libraries, not in the temples."
Zanab crouched beside him. "Ash… the elders said the outer valley was cursed. They've forbidden anyone from crossing the ridge since the Year of Hollow Rain."
"That was only fifteen years ago."
"And yet no one who crossed returned."
Ash stood, brushing dust from his hands. "Then maybe it's time someone did."
Zanab caught his arm. "This isn't about exploration. This is something else. Your eyes—" She paused, her gaze intense. "They've changed. There's something moving behind them. A shadow that wasn't there when I met you."
Ash looked away.
She was right.
Since his encounter in the deeper caverns—the shrine, the fragmented memories, the whispers—he hadn't been the same. There were moments where voices stirred behind his thoughts, not entirely foreign, but not fully his either. Sometimes they spoke in riddles. Sometimes in warnings. Other times… they demanded he remember things he could not have possibly lived through.
He tried to smile. "I'm still me."
Zanab didn't return the smile. "That's what I'm afraid of."
A rustle sounded below—quick and light.
Ash moved instinctively, motioning Zanab to stay low. Something slithered between the stones ahead—its form undefined, more mist than matter. Its eyes, though, glimmered like polished obsidian.
"Spirit beast?" Zanab whispered.
Ash shook his head. "No. Too light-footed. It's watching us."
Another sound answered from behind—then one above. The entire valley was breathing again, but not like before. It was awake now.
Zanab's spiritual sense flared. "We're surrounded."
"Let them come," Ash said softly. "If they're drawn to this place, they may hold pieces of its story."
He stepped forward, letting the unseen watchers circle. His hand drifted to the hilt of the short blade he carried—not a true spiritual weapon, but one that had saved his life more than once. "You'll stay back?"
Zanab nodded, already channeling defensive Qi along her sleeves.
From the mist emerged the first form.
A figure draped in ragged robes, taller than any man Ash had seen, face hidden by a cracked mask made of shell and bone. Its aura was neither cold nor fiery, but an absence of both—like a silence so deep it swallowed all sound.
"Who are you?" Ash demanded, though the figure did not respond in words.
Instead, it raised a single, elongated finger—and pointed toward Ash's heart.
Ash flinched.
A vision split across his mind—an image of a burning tree, a blade buried in earth, and a sea that held a scream for a thousand years.
The ground trembled, and from the stones beneath, a second formation flared—unlike any he had seen before. This one was incomplete, interrupted mid-activation, perhaps during the war that had ended this place.
Ash fell to one knee, grasping his forehead. "What… is this place?"
The masked figure didn't answer.
But in his mind, the whispers formed a sentence—cold, bitter, and ancient.
"This is where the first sealed one fell. The one who dared defy the natural path."
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