The Hollow Compass looked deceptively simple.
A flat disc of sandstone about the size of a dinner plate, it bore a trio of nested pentagons on its face, interlocked with radial notches and tiny grooves filled with silver dust. Around the edges, Jin had carved floating markers—indicators etched with geometric accents for directionality and displacement flow. At the center, a smooth, polished crystal pulsed dimly in response to ambient mana shifts.
He held it up to the sun.
"Not bad for a magical tremor detector made with gardening tools and a goat-hair brush," he said proudly.
Professor Beakley clucked once and promptly pecked one of the directional nodes.
"Field test it is, then."
Jin started near the academy. The compass was steady. A few faint flickers from the runes embedded in walls and windows—but nothing abnormal.
He strolled past the gardens, where villagers had begun installing irrigation glyph tiles that responded to soil dampness—an accidental invention from a kid trying to invent a "mud whistle." The vegetables looked smugly hydrated.
When Jin reached the older parts of Lenth, the compass buzzed gently.
He stopped near the community well. "Could be water mana," he murmured. "Or old ley drift. Let's get closer."
He followed the pull to a quieter corner—the original village circle, a sun-worn mosaic courtyard where folks gathered for midsummer songs, drying baskets, and staring into space when the weather turned too warm for thoughts.
Jin crouched, placing the compass on one of the larger center stones. The crystal at its heart lit with soft, persistent pulses.
Doom, doom... doom.
Low, rhythm-like. Almost like a heartbeat.
Nira found him an hour later, nose pressed to the ground.
"Digging?"
"Thinking," he muttered. "Then maybe digging."
She crouched beside him, eyeing the compass. "Glowing more here?"
"Stronger than anywhere else in the village." He tapped the ground. "And listen."
He pulled out a chalk stick and sketched a quick Farsense Echo Ring—a layered circle spell meant to reverberate mana vibrations through the earth like a sonar ping.
The line shimmered. A hum pulsed. And the sound that echoed back didn't bounce like solid stone.
It resonated. Hollow. Curved.
A dome.
"Under us," he whispered.
Nira rubbed her arms. "Vault?"
"Or a cavern. Or a crypt." He grinned weakly. "Hopefully not the town's forgotten compost pit."
The next day, the village council gave permission to explore—so long as Jin swore three times, in front of the shrine and a nervous-looking goat, that he would not accidentally trigger any ancient curses.
Excavation began slowly. Jin enlisted a few of his older students, plus Grema the tanner, who had an unhealthy enthusiasm for "weird rocks that shouldn't exist." They cleared a few cobblestones, revealing packed soil beneath.
Not far down, their spades struck something unnatural.
Polished stone.
Dark, seamless.
Jin knelt beside it and brushed away soil with reverent hands.
Etched into the surface was a spiral made of interlocking triangles—too fine to be chiseled by hand. The pattern shimmered faintly beneath the dirt, reflecting sun like it had been waiting for light.
Nira frowned. "You make that?"
Jin shook his head. "No. I've never seen this before."
He ran a finger along the edge. It was warm.
Not like sun-warm.
Like sleeping.
He stood up and looked around. Birds chirped in the trees. A child chased an enchanted bucket across the road. Lanterns swayed gently in the breeze.
Beneath it all, this thing waited.
Not sinister, not immediately dangerous—but old.
Like a secret the ground had chosen not to tell until now.
He felt a tingle run up his spine.
"This isn't where the monster came through," he said softly. "This is what it was headed for."
And if something buried could pull a beast this far through Valthuun's warded mountains?
They needed to know what it was.
And fast.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The excavation began at dawn.
Jin stood at the edge of the clearing in his patched cloak and geometry-inscribed gloves, holding a chalkboard inscribed with hastily drawn spelunking runes. Nira stood beside him, holding two torches, a length of enchanted rope, and the firm expression of someone mentally preparing to face either ancient curses or moldy wallpaper.
"Scared?" she asked.
Jin tilted his head. "About the thing we're about to crawl into that's humming like a sleepy dragon and drawing monsters from across mountain ranges? Terrified."
Beakley clucked and headbutted his boot as if to say, Then hurry up.
With help from Grema, the tanner-turned-amateur-archaeologist, and two brave stoneworkers named Tol and Fen, they rolled aside the last cobbles from the old gathering ring and carefully lifted the polished slab beneath.
Dust rose.
Beneath the stone was a set of smooth stairs descending into the dark. Carved directly into the rock on either side were two spirals composed of repeating triangles, much like those seen in the sky-serpent carvings near the shrine—but older. Simpler, almost.
The air that flowed up from below was cool, dry, and tinged with the faint scent of metal and moss.
Jin lit the first torch. "Well. Let's poke something no one's touched in centuries."
The staircase descended longer than expected—twelve turns, then fifteen, the shape slowly coiling. Jin counted seventy-three steps before the tunnel opened into a chamber.
It wasn't grand. Not a hidden throne room or crystalline temple.
It was quiet. Sparse. Deliberate.
The floor was smooth slate tile, set in hexagonal patterns. The walls curved upward, meeting in an arch that glowed faintly as if absorbing the torchlight and amplifying it in return.
On the far end of the chamber stood a pedestal. Floating above it: a circular slate disc suspended between three silver lines drawn into the floor. It didn't spin. It didn't hum. It simply was.
Jin crept closer and felt the tingle of mana thrum down his spine.
The disc was covered in carvings.
But unlike his own glyphs, or the spirals seen in sky-serpent shrines, these symbols were abstract. Geometric. Concentric shapes nested inside one another, building toward… something.
Nira whispered, "What does it say?"
"I don't think it's language," Jin murmured. "It's… a solution."
The lines weren't instructions. They were a puzzle. A chain of patterns leading the viewer to recognize—if not comprehend—some universal truth.
Tol stepped around the edge, running a hand along the wall. "Feels like… math."
"Magic-as-math," Jin corrected. "Or… maybe it's the other way around."
He tapped one of the shapes. The disc trembled.
From behind them, the air shifted.
A sound—low, brief, almost like a breath—echoed across the stones.
"Did anyone else hear that?"
Grema nodded. "Came from deeper in."
A doorway stood at the far corner of the room, barely visible in the curve of the stone. Not carved. Seamless.
Jin took a step toward it.
And the compass in his bag glowed.
Not pulsing. Not trembling.
Steady.
As if it had found its center.
They didn't open that door.
Not yet.
Jin drew a seal across the threshold—simple, respectful, sealing the mana instead of severing it.
"We go back," he said.
Tol and Fen nodded with visible relief.
Grema took one last look at the disc and muttered, "That thing isn't part of the mountain. It was put here."
Outside, the stars were just rising. Lenth glowed with quiet light, villagers walking to evening meals and rune-lit homes. Children laughed down by the garden channel. The square had already been re-covered, neat and clean.
As they emerged, Nira exhaled deeply. "No monsters?"
"Not yet," Jin said. "But the ground remembers something."
He looked at his compass—no longer trembling.
Just watching.