High above, the ceiling had been carved into coffers—rectangular recesses that created intricate geometric patterns across the vaulted stone, each one edged with meticulously carved molding, each one capturing and hoarding shadow to create the illusion of impossible depth and dimension. At the center of each coffer, a carved rosette bloomed like a stone flower frozen at the peak of perfection, and within each rosette's heart, tiny channels had been painstakingly incised—symbolic representations of water flowing from blessed stone, the miracle that had kept their scattered civilization clinging to survival in the wasteland.
Elliot's neck ached from craning backward, but he couldn't look away. The craftsmanship was beyond anything his people could create now. Beyond anything they could even imagine.
Everything—walls, floor, ceiling, columns, the goddess herself towering in her niche—had been carved from the single, continuous stone of the canyon. There were no joints visible anywhere, no seams where separate pieces had been fitted together, no evidence of construction in the way his mind understood building. The entire shrine was one unified work of staggering ambition, the canyon itself transformed into art, into worship, into a hymn of stone and light and shadow dedicated to the deity who had given them the water-stone, who had saved them from death by thirst when the world turned against humanity.
The rose-red color shifted constantly as Elliot's eyes adjusted to the dimness, as the light filtering from above changed moment by moment with the sun's descent, as shadows moved across carved surfaces like living things. The stone seemed to breathe with those changes, to pulse with a rhythm that defied its fundamental nature. He could almost convince himself the walls expanded and contracted, that the goddess's chest rose and fell with inhaled breath.
His own breath came in short, sharp gasps that bounced off the walls and ceiling, returning to him distorted. "Hello?" The word emerged hoarse, raw, crushed by the weight of stone and silence and the shrine's terrible age pressing down from above. "Please, I need—" His voice cracked. He swallowed against the dryness coating his throat. "I need help. They're coming for me."
Nothing answered.
Only his own voice returning from a dozen directions at once, bouncing off carved surfaces, fragmenting into pieces, multiplying until it sounded like a crowd of desperate supplicants whispered his plea back at him in mocking chorus. The echoes faded slowly, reluctantly, as though the shrine itself was tasting his words, rolling them around in some vast stone mouth, considering their flavor, deciding whether they deserved answer or dismissal.
The silence that followed felt heavier than before. Deliberate. Watchful.
Outside, beyond the chamber's protective walls, the sounds sharpened like a blade finding its edge against a whetstone. Voices bounced off the canyon walls, filtered through the narrow entrance passage, carrying clearly despite the distance. Steel scraped against leather—weapons being drawn. The war hounds snarled, a sound like meat tearing from bone, their claws clicking and scratching as they scrambled over rocks outside the ornate facade. Getting closer. Always closer.
"Ralven!" The commanding voice cut through the evening air with military precision. "Take the east approach—don't let the bastard slip past if he bolts!"
"Aye, Watchman Kael!" The response came immediately, sharp with obedience and the anticipation of violence.
"Joram, Petran—close the west side! Drive him toward the shrine entrance if he runs! I want him pinned, not scattered!"
The sound drove through Elliot like a spear of molten glass, transforming his spine to water and his courage to smoke. They were organizing. Surrounding the shrine. Creating a net he couldn't possibly escape.
His legs gave out beneath him.
He crashed to his knees hard enough that he heard the impact before he felt it—a sharp crack of bone against polished stone. Pain detonated through his kneecaps a heartbeat later, white-hot and absolute. He felt skin split, felt the warm trickle of fresh blood soaking into his already-ruined trouser legs, felt it spread across the polished rose-red floor in dark tributaries. His hands shot forward instinctively, catching his weight, then clasped together as though of their own volition. Fingers wove tight, knuckles blanching white with pressure.
He pressed his forehead against the stone floor, feeling grit and dust dig into his skin despite the polish, inhaling the mineral smell of ancient rock—clean and dry and utterly indifferent to his suffering.
The stone was cool against his fevered skin, smooth as silk beneath the thin layer of accumulated dust, hard as judgment rendered without mercy.
"Please." The word barely made sound, just breath shaped into desperate meaning. He tried again, louder, forcing air through his constricted throat. "Please. I'm begging you. Anyone. Anything that can hear me." His voice broke completely. "I'll do anything. I'll serve. I'll sacrifice. I'll—"
The words died on his tongue, turning to ash and bitterness. He'd made promises before, to gods who never listened, to powers that never manifested, to the empty sky that swallowed prayers without acknowledgment. His mother had prayed when the Kryll came. His father had prayed when they separated the men from the women. His sisters had probably prayed too, in whatever slave wagon carried them south.
Prayer was just noise that desperate people made to comfort themselves while the universe ground them to dust beneath indifferent wheels.
But the prayers emerged anyway, unstoppable as blood from a wound, hollow and useless as dried husks rattling in dead men's throats. "My family. They have my family. My mother and sisters—they're being taken to the slave markets. My father's probably already dead in some punishment camp. And I can't—" His shoulders shook. "I can't do anything. I can't save them. I can't even save myself. I'm nothing. I'm no one. I'm just—"
His voice failed entirely, dissolving into something between a sob and a laugh—the sound of sanity fraying at the edges.
No god had ever answered him before. Not when his village burned. Not when they dragged his family away in chains. Not during the endless days of forced labor, breaking his back for the water-stone that enriched Veridia while his people died of thirst.
Why would one start now? What made this moment, this desperate plea, any different from the thousands of unanswered prayers that rose from the wasteland every day?
Outside, a war hound bayed—long and triumphant, the sound of a predator catching fresh scent. Closer now. Much closer.
Footsteps echoed through the entrance corridor. Multiple sets, moving with tactical precision.
"Check every corner," Watchman Kael's voice commanded, drifting into the chamber like poison gas. "These old ruins have hidden passages sometimes. I want him found, and I want him alive—at least until we extract what information he has about that energy signature. After that, I don't care what condition he's in."
Elliot's forehead remained pressed to the floor. His eyes squeezed shut. His entire body trembled with exhaustion and terror and the bitter resignation of the truly defeated.
The goddess towered above him in her niche, serene and silent, her stone hand eternally outstretched with that impossible black mask resting on her palm. Offering nothing. Promising nothing.
Just watching as another desperate soul broke against the world's indifference.
"Please," he whispered one final time, the word barely disturbing the air. "Please don't let it end like this."
The silence that answered felt absolute.
Then—
It doesn't have to, the voice said, and this time it didn't bloom inside his skull. This time it spoke from everywhere at once, from the walls and floor and ceiling, from the very stone itself. Rise, Elliot. Take what I offer. Become what you must become.
His head snapped up, eyes wide, searching the chamber for the source.
The goddess's carved face remained unchanged—serene, eternal, stone.
But the mask on her palm pulsed with darkness, drinking light, and in that darkness he saw reflected not what he was, but what he could become.
The footsteps in the corridor grew louder.
Time for choosing had arrived, whether he was ready or not.