After a while resting on the boulder, the party finally decided to move forward.
The journey was as uneventful as ever—silent and dull.
They walked for what felt like hours, through an ash-blasted wasteland. The ground was cracked and dry, the sky an endless stretch of pale grey. There was no sun, no shadow—just that muted, colorless dome that made it impossible to tell when the rain would come.
Eventually, they reached a field.
It wasn't a field of grass. It was a field of spears.
But not normal spears—these were far too large. Massive iron bolts, the kind that could only be launched by siege weapons the size of buildings. Each one was the length of a wagon and twice as thick, scattered across the plain like broken teeth.
The plain was littered with iron.
They jutted from the ground at odd angles—half-buried, cracked from impact, or skewed like they'd been hurled in desperation. Whatever ancient machines had flung them had long since rusted away or been swallowed by time, but the bolts remained—corroded, blackened, and silent.
The wind dragged itself across the field, whistling through the hollow shafts with a low, metallic hum.
Some had hit their mark. The earth told the story—torn, sunken, still bearing the scars of massive impacts. Others had missed, lodged into stone or buried deep in the dirt.
Riven and the rest of the cohort stood there, mesmerized. It was beautiful—in a disturbing way. A graveyard of rust and silence.
Then something cold touched Riven's shoulder, he flinched than looked down its was water.A droplet slid off his cloak and onto his hand, a moment later, the sharp crack of thunder split the air.
It was hard to tell the weather was changing under such a lifeless sky. No one noticed the clouds gathering until the first drops began to fall. Then it came all at once.First a drizzle, then it became a downpour.Soaking through their cloaks, hissing against the scorched earth.
"We need to find shelter!" Varik shouted.
They ran,there was nothing around them but the bolts, jutting like rusted spines from the earth. The rain refused to let up—an onslaught hammering the plain.
After a minute of sprinting, something loomed in the distance, It was pale white.At first, just a speck, faint and fuzzy. But then it grew Sowly until it became a shape.
It was a massive skull.
Half-buried in the charred ground. Easily thirty meters tall,I t resembled a human skull—just enough to spark a primal fear.
But it wasn't a skull, not truly, it only wanted to be.
Its shape mimicked the human form just enough to unsettle—eye sockets, but too many. Jawbones layered over jawbones, interlocking like the mouths of starving things.From a distance, it looked like a single massive head.
But Up close, the illusion broke.
It was a fusion. Countless skulls—large and small—twisted together. Melted, fused, stretched into a grotesque mass. Some upside down, some sideways, some without jaws, some with too many teeth, It was all wrong.
Several bolts were embedded into the mess—rusted spears buried deep in the thing's skulls.
And on the surface there was a slick, black, glossy where the rain touched it.it looked like moss, or probably just rotted flesh.
And worst of all—it breathed.
Not like a living thing. But the wind passed through it in just the wrong way, and it moaned. A low, mournful sound, like a scream caught in the throat. Like something sobbing through its nose—if it ever had one.
They stopped walking.
Nobody said anything at first. All they did was stare with fear in their eyes, even Nira, who never seemed flinched, had gone pale. Her hand hovered near her blade, fingers twitching but not drawing.
Jae looked like a corpse—face drained of color, unmoving. The others weren't much better. Riven said nothing, but he felt it, that crawling wrongness in his spine. Like his soul was trying to shrink away. This wasn't a monster, It wasn't even a corpse.
It was a monument, a memory of something that should not have lived, what stood before them was a true
A TRUE ELDRITCH HORROR.
Eros took a shaky step forward. His voice cracked as he whispered:
"…What the hell is that? Just one of its teeth is bigger than me."
Varik turned toward him.
"That's where we'll stay."
Everyone stared at him.
Nira frowned. "We're going inside that thing?" she asked. "I think that's… a bit much."
The utility-type Firstborn, quiet until now, finally spoke.
"What if it comes to life?"
Varik stepped closer to one of the sockets, resting a hand on the colossal skull.
"It won't," he said. "Like I told you—everything here is dead."
Still… that didn't make them feel safe.But they moved, slowly, one by one, they entered the skull.The inside was no better.It was dark, wet, claustrophobic. The walls were slick with something black and fibrous—moss, or whatever remained of the thing that had once lived here.
Riven said nothing, but his thoughts wouldn't stop.
"Was this… the thing that destroyed the ruined city's walls?"
"How did it die here?"
"What could possibly have killed it?"
"And why was there a humming sound?"
He'd thought it was the wind—but now, inside, there was no wind, there was only silence and his questions where still left unanswered
Something had happened here, something terrible, omething wrong enough to scar the earth itself.
And whatever it was, it left behind this skull.
This monument to a thing that should never have been born.
Riven sat with his back against the bone wall. There was little light, only what trickled in through the cracks where the massive bolts had pierced the skull. But it wasn't enough. The air was cold, and they needed a fire—fast. Nira used the same method to start it again, but this time, it was much harder. Everything was damp, and the materials refused to catch.
Eventually, a pale blue flame flickered to life. Its light crawled across the inside of the skull, revealing more than they wanted to see.
A disturbing sight.