Finally, a bank of silver mist parted, and an enormous hall materialized ahead, its spires spearing so high they vanished into low-rolling clouds. It was as if the main hall was the dwelling of an ancient deity.
Walls of fitted stone blocks rose in solemn grandeur. Each block carried carvings of mythical beasts, coiled spells, and intricate array-work that seemed ready to breathe at any moment.
Jared and Sylvia drew closer. The main doors, sealed tight, were smothered in overlapping glyphs that pulsed with a forbidding, unspent charge.
Studying the carvings, Jared noticed familiar patterns, echoes of the very runes they had decoded throughout the stone forest, threaded here in a far more complicated tapestry.
“To open this door, we’ll have to dismantle its seal as well,” he murmured.
Closing his eyes, he began to run countless possibilities across the theater of his mind, searching for the single thread that would unravel the enchantment.
Sylvia waited in silence, gaze locked on the doors, her shoulders held rigid between eager anticipation and the fear of what might lie beyond.
At last, Jared’s eyes snapped open.
After much difficulty and trials, he finally found the method to break the rune restriction. His fingers flashed through a rapid series of hand seals while a whispered chant spilled from his lips. Needles of light burst from his palms and struck the door’s runes.
As the light shone, the runes began to undergo gradual changes. The once interlocked lines loosened like tangled vines coming free, and a surge of pressure thundered from within the hall.
“Now!” Jared barked.
He shoved with both hands. The colossal gates groaned, surrendered, and drifted apart, releasing a breath of age-old air that smelled of forgotten worlds and boundless promise.
Jared and Sylvia felt as if they had stepped into a whole new world.
Inside, the chamber proved vast enough to swallow a cathedral. The marble floor, polished to a mirror’s sheen, bore labyrinthine etchings that whispered beneath their boots.
Colossal statues ringed the walls—some austere, some enigmatic, all guarding the inner sanctum.
At the exact center stood a monolithic stone dais, and upon it rested a single tome bathed in soft golden radiance.
Jared and Sylvia approached the platform slowly, breaths shallow, every instinct telling them that within those gilded pages slept power, and peril, beyond imagination.
Sylvia whispered, eyes blazing with wonder, “Do you think this is the fabled treasure of the Heaven Gate Sect’s ruins?”
That gaze of hers, alive with unfiltered excitement, caught the lantern-light and seemed to shine all on its own.
Jared dipped his chin, the torch casting gold across his profile.
“Very likely,” he murmured, voice steady. “But keep your guard up. A hall this grand seldom reveals its last trap first.”
They had scarcely extended a hand toward the ancient volume when the floor quaked, a deep, animalistic growl rolling through the chamber stones.
Immediately after, from every archway burst spears of obsidian light, converging overhead until they whirled into a single, churning vortex, black as midnight, foul as grave-soil—breathing a malevolent power that chilled the marrow.
“Move! Danger incoming!” Jared barked, the words cracking through the vast room like a whip.
He lunged in front of Sylvia, shoulders squared, arms sweeping her behind the protective curve of his body.
Fingers flashed through seals, weaving a net of light as he readied himself for whatever might crawl out of that darkness.
From the heart of the vortex, a silhouette coalesced and stepped forward, cloth as dark as the void, movements slow, deliberate, sovereign.
A murky mist clung to his face like living smoke, erasing any hint of human feature and turning him into a walking question.
“Who dares invade the Heaven Gate Sect’s ruins?” The mysterious newcomer’s voice scraped the air, low and rusted, as though it had clawed its way up from the underworld.
Jared met the void-shrouded gaze without flinching.
“We stumbled in by chance, no malice intended,” he said, tone calm but unyielding. “Yet those ancient records are ours for the taking.”
The stranger let out a ragged chuckle. “You? Seize my ancient records?”
The laugh curdled into menace. “I have guarded them for years beyond counting. None of you leaves with so much as a page.”
With a violent sweep of his arms, ribbons of night burst from his sleeves, surging toward Jared and Sylvia like collapsing tides of ink.
Jared answered in kind, flooding the air with luminous power that hardened into a dome of gold, folding Sylvia inside its radiant shell. At the same time, he swiftly performed a series of hand seals.
From his fingertips streaked spears of crackling energy, each bolt a sun-hot arrow that collided head-on with the encroaching dark.
The collision hit with a thunderous blast that rocked the hall. Light and shadow canceled in a blinding bloom, sparks hissing out like dying stars before silence rushed back in.
