The road beyond the capital was silent.No light, no towers, only the hum of the wind through broken glass and iron.
Kael walked for days beneath a dim sun, his pack half-empty, his mind restless. The relic pulsed faintly against his chest, as if sensing his fatigue. Sometimes, in that rhythm, he could almost hear words — a whisper without language.
He wondered if he was losing his mind.Or if something else was finding it.
At dusk, the horizon changed.The smooth metallic plains gave way to cracked earth — sand veined with red minerals that glowed faintly under starlight. The map-chip projected an old route marker: OREN VALE – 14 km east.
The name stirred something in him.He had heard the elders speak of it once — a valley that had swallowed whole monasteries during the wars of the Ascendants. Some said the ground there still remembered their prayers.
That night, he camped beside the ruins of a transmission tower. The wind sang through its ribs like a flute.Kael sat cross-legged, trying to quiet his mind the way the village elder once taught him.Follow the breath. Observe the cause. Release the grasp.
But the relic had other plans.
Its surface flickered — patterns spiraling outward, forming brief symbols in the air before fading. Each one felt both foreign and deeply familiar. Kael's heartbeat aligned with the pulse again, and his perception widened — sound became color, air became movement, time slowed.
He felt the desert breathing with him.
Then came the voices.Soft, overlapping whispers, like echoes trapped in stone.They spoke of paths, cycles, and return — too many voices to follow.
Kael gasped, opening his eyes. The relic dimmed instantly. Sweat ran down his back, and for a moment he wasn't sure where he was.He forced himself to breathe again, grounding his awareness.The night was silent once more.
At dawn, a shadow appeared on the horizon.
A small, hovering transport — old model, mismatched panels, no insignia. It drifted unevenly across the desert air.Kael ducked behind a dune, hand over the relic.
The craft descended roughly, landing half a kilometer away. The hatch opened, releasing a thin figure in a desert robe. She staggered, shielding her eyes.
Kael hesitated, then approached cautiously.
The woman noticed him first — she raised a staff tipped with a ring of shifting symbols."Identify yourself!" she called. Her voice was hoarse but firm.
"I'm—" Kael paused. He couldn't use his real name; the Empire would be searching. "—a traveler from the east."
She studied him a long moment. Then her posture softened. "Then you're far from safe ground, traveler."Her name, he learned later, was Lyra, a researcher of "pre-Empire consciousness practices." Her tone carried the calm of someone who had seen both miracles and mistakes.
When Kael mentioned Oren Vale, her expression darkened."You shouldn't go there," she said quietly. "The ground itself listens. The last scholars who tried never returned."
"I don't have a choice."
Lyra's gaze drifted to the faint glow from beneath his cloak. "Ah," she murmured. "You carry a reason strong enough to defy warnings."
She didn't press further.
They traveled together by necessity. Lyra's transport could still hover, but its power cells were dying.By the second night, the landscape turned jagged — ancient spires of stone curved upward like the ribs of a sleeping beast.
Kael felt it before he saw it — a pressure in the air, heavy, sacred, and alive.
When they reached the entrance of Oren Vale, the relic vibrated so violently that Kael had to clutch it to his chest.
Lyra stopped beside him. "You feel it too, don't you?"
"Yes."
"This place," she said, eyes distant, "is not dead. It remembers what men forgot."
They entered the valley as night fell.The ruins glowed faintly in the moonlight — pillars etched with spirals, shattered Buddha statues overgrown with crystal moss, and stone pathways that seemed to rearrange when unobserved.
Kael knelt beside a cracked tablet half-buried in sand.The carvings were neither fully human nor alien — they spoke in patterns of balance, energy, and mind.As he traced a line, the relic in his hand pulsed — and the symbols answered with light.
Lyra gasped. "You're activating it."
"I didn't mean to—"
The ground trembled softly.From deep beneath the valley came a slow, resonant hum — like the world exhaling after millennia of silence.
Kael's eyes widened. The whisper returned — clearer this time, resonant, commanding:
"Walk deeper, Child of Cause."
He turned toward the darkness ahead. The path had opened — a stone corridor descending into the heart of the Vale.
Lyra hesitated. "If we go down there, we may not come back."
Kael nodded slowly. "Then let's find out why it called."
Together, they stepped into the glowing passage, swallowed by the hum of something vast and ancient awakening below.