The sun was weak over the ruins, filtered through a dusty sky that hadn't seen clear blue in over a century. Lys Veran stood at the edge of what had once been a temple its crumbling columns a ghost of something far older than any AI archive admitted.
She ran her fingers over the stone, feeling the grooves of carvings long erased from public history. It wasn't just stone it was intentional. Aligned. Functional. Emotional. Buildings today breathed, flexed, even spoke, but none carried the stillness and mystery this ruin held.
Her scanner hummed faintly. No power signatures. No smart material. Just the raw touch of hands from a civilization that had somehow built with soul.
Then she saw it.Half-buried beneath vines and ash, a rectangular slab leaned against a broken wall. Its surface wasn't just etched it was inscribed with code-like symbols that pulsed faintly in her scanner's viewfinder. Stone wasn't supposed to react like that.
Lys knelt down, heart quickening. She brushed it clean, revealing something else a symbol, neither ancient nor modern. A fusion.
"Found you," she whispered.
Behind her, the wind shifted.
The city was watching.