As I took my first step toward the fortress,
the world around me broke.
The ground beneath my feet dissolved into light
brilliant, cold, infinite.
My body felt weightless, my soul unbound.
The air was gone, the sound was gone
even the heartbeat inside my chest seemed to fade away.
I was no longer standing upon the earth.
I was above it.
An endless expanse of shimmering emptiness stretched around me.
And below—far below
lay the world.
I could see everything.
The forests, the seas, the cities drowned in fog.
Mountains bleeding light into the sky.
The threads of timepast, present, and future woven together into a single, fragile tapestry.
They flickered before my eyes like dying embers,
and though I tried to grasp them,
they slipped away like smoke between my fingers.
For one fleeting instant,
I glimpsed ruin.
Fire consuming the heavens.
Shadows devouring the land.
A world collapsing under its own silence.
And then it was gone.
I didn't understand it none of it.
But deep inside, something in me knew:
if I didn't act, that doom would come to pass.
I didn't know what the Eternal Truth was.
I didn't know my purpose,
or even the reason I was still alive.
But one thing was clear
I had to save this world.
Even if I didn't yet know how.
Then the air trembled.
A ripple spread through the light, bending space itself.
And from that formless brilliance,
something vast began to take shape.
An eye.
Radiant and unblinking.
It hovered above me, endless in size,
its gaze piercing through reality and thought alike.
No body, no mouth just a single eye,
gazing directly into the depths of my soul.
The weight of its presence was unbearable.
I felt as if the universe itself had turned to look at me.
Then, a voice
not spoken, but felt,
vibrating through my bones and mind.
"Why have you come to this forsaken land?"
The words echoed through me,
cold and ancient.
I opened my mouth, trembling.
"I… I don't know.
Perhaps it was fate that brought me here."
A silence followed
long, heavy, like judgment.
Then the voice returned, deeper, sharper.
"Even if you lied, I would know.
I am the Eye of Everything
the god who foresees all,
who knows all that has been and will be."
Its gaze intensified,
and I could feel it pulling at my very essence,
as though peeling back every layer of thought I had ever buried.
I dared to speak again.
"If you see everything… then tell me what is this world?"
"A world watched by gods,"
the Eye answered,
"where every life burns beneath their gaze.
This land is their mirror
and their prison."
The words sent a shiver down my spine.
I hesitated, then asked,
"Do you know my purpose? The one the little god gave me?"
"What god?"
Its tone shifted
not curious, but cautious.
"The little girl," I said.
"She wore a white kimono. Crimson eyes.
When I awoke on the battlefield, she spoke to me. She… she blessed me."
The light around me began to twist.
The Eye pulsed once, and suddenly
I was no longer standing in the heavens.
I saw the battlefield again
the corpses, the blood, the stillness.
And there I was
lying among the dead.
But this time, there was no girl.
No voice.
No blessing.
Only me.
Speaking into nothing.
"There was no one when you awoke," the Eye said softly.
"You were alone."
The words hollowed me.
They scraped something deep inside my chest—
a truth I didn't want to believe.
The girl's laughter.
Her eyes.
Her voice.
Was it all a dream?
A hallucination?
Or something even more terrible—
a memory from a life I had already lost?
The Eye's light dimmed, and its voice faded to a whisper.
"You seek a truth you cannot yet bear, Carten Ardnol.
When you find it… it may already be too late."
And before I could speak again,
the light broke.
The heavens collapsed.
And I fell
back into the darkness of the world below.
I stood motionless for a long while,
the echo of that divine voice still trembling in the hollow of my chest.
My thoughts were fractured scattered like shards of glass upon the floor of my mind.
The Eye had shown me a vision that denied everything I believed.
It told me the girl never existed,
that I had spoken only to the wind
to the silence of my own delusion.
But no
that couldn't be.
Her voice had warmth.
Her touch had weight.
When I awoke from death, her light had wrapped around me like a mother's embrace.
I could feel her presence still, faint as the scent of rain lingering after a storm.
No illusion could feel so real.
No madness could breathe so close to the heart.
I knew she was real.
She had to be.
And yet, as I stepped forward,
doubt began to crawl across my thoughts like shadowed vines.
The gates of the fortress loomed before me
colossal things of stone and ruin.
Once they might have stood proud, carved with symbols of kingdoms long forgotten,
but now they hung cracked and crooked,
their hinges strangled by rust.
Vines crept through every fracture,
their roots thick as veins, drinking from the blood-soaked soil below.
I crossed the threshold.
The air within was stale, heavy with dust and decay.
Each breath felt like swallowing centuries.
My footsteps echoed faintly,
answering back from corridors too deep to see.
The walls were built of gray rock massive blocks fitted together with ancient precision.
But time had undone their strength.
Cracks spidered across every surface,
and the moss had claimed dominion here.
Green and black veins crawled over pillars that once held the sky,
now fractured and leaning, their purpose long forgotten.
Everywhere I looked, the same story whispered
of collapse, of silence,
of something that had died and refused to leave.
Blood stained the floor in places.
Dark, dry streaks old, ancient
yet still clinging to the cold stone like memories that refused to fade.
The scent of iron hung in the air.
And beneath it, a faint, sweet rot.
I moved deeper, through halls where the wind itself seemed afraid to enter.
The silence here was not empty.
It was alive.
It watched.
It waited.
I passed through vast chambers whose ceilings had fallen away,
moonlight spilling through the wounds in the roof,
painting the ruins in shades of crimson and silver.
Broken statues lay toppled on the ground
warriors, kings, perhaps even gods
their faces shattered beyond recognition.
I wondered if they had once watched over this place,
and if they too had abandoned it when the darkness came.
The more I explored,
the more confusion settled upon me.
Why was this fortress marked forbidden on the map?
Why had no one returned alive from Ascalin?
There was nothing here but ruin and silence.
No monsters.
No traps.
No curses
just the quiet breath of something forgotten.
And yet,
beneath that stillness,
I could feel a pulse.
A faint rhythm in the air.
Like a heartbeat buried deep within the stone.
Hours passed.
Or perhaps only minutes it was impossible to tell.
The sky outside had turned to ink.
The crimson moon still hung above,
motionless, eternal,
watching through the shattered roof like an unblinking eye.
I searched the great hall, overturning fallen tables, brushing away layers of dust thick enough to bury dreams.
All I found were fragments
a rusted blade,
a torn banner bearing a crest no one would remember,
and bones
hundreds of them.
I sat for a moment, resting my back against the wall.
The cold of the stone seeped through my skin,
grounding me in this strange, haunted place.
I was tired—
tired of questions that never had answers,
tired of the weight of destiny pressing against a soul that didn't understand its own name.
The silence deepened.
Only the wind whispered now,
threading softly through the cracks in the stone.
Night had fallen completely.
The stars had vanished
only the red moon remained,
bleeding light through the ruin's wounds.
There was nowhere else to go.
No sound of beasts.
No trace of life.
I decided to stay here for the night.
I gathered a few broken planks,
lit a small flame from the emberstone I carried.
The fire crackled weakly, its light trembling against the walls.
As I stared into the flickering glow,
I couldn't help but wonder
was the fortress truly empty?
Or was something ancient, unseen,
watching from the shadows between breaths?
I wrapped my cloak tighter around me,
and whispered into the silence,
"If you're real… little one,
guide me still."
But no voice answered.
Only the wind.
Only the slow heartbeat of the fortress,
echoing somewhere deep within the stone.