Chapter 16
The ancient corridor welcomed them once more with silence.
The brief exchange with the mysterious system had faded into memory, but neither Kyrth nor Saeroyx could pretend it had never happened.
The little black puppy trotted a few steps behind them.
Its tiny paws made no sound against the polished floor.
Occasionally, it would stop to sniff the air before happily catching up again, looking no different from an ordinary young pup.
Yet both men knew better.
A creature described as a Primordial Devouring Beast had no business appearing ordinary.
For nearly an hour, they continued through the endless passage.
The silver veins beneath the floor became brighter with every step they took.
The ancient pillars grew taller.
Their carvings became increasingly intricate, depicting countless doors standing beneath unfamiliar stars. Some images showed figures stepping through those doors, while others showed entire cities disappearing behind them.
Kyrth slowed his pace.
“…These aren’t decorations.”
Saeroyx glanced at the nearest pillar.
“They’re records.”
“Records of what?”
“I don’t know.”
“But whoever built this place wanted someone to remember.”
Neither spoke again.
The corridor gradually widened until it opened into an enormous circular chamber.
Both men instinctively stopped.
Even the puppy sat down without being told.
Before them stood a pair of colossal black doors.
They towered so high that their upper edges vanished into darkness.
Each door was carved from a single slab of an unfamiliar black material that reflected neither the silver veins nor the blue crystals.
Instead…
It seemed to absorb every trace of light that touched it.
Ancient engravings covered its surface.
Countless stars.
Interlocking circles.
And thousands upon thousands of doors carved within larger doors, each one smaller than the last, forming an impossible pattern.
At the exact center rested two empty handprints.
One on each side.
Kyrth slowly approached.
“…Impossible.”
His voice echoed softly through the chamber.
“I’ve never seen craftsmanship like this.”
He placed a hand against the surface.
Cold.
Utterly motionless.
There wasn’t even the faintest vibration beneath the stone.
He searched along the edges.
No hinges.
No locking mechanism.
No visible gap.
It looked less like a door…
And more like a wall pretending to be one.
“There has to be a way.”
Together they searched every corner of the chamber.
Kyrth examined the engravings, traced the symbols, and even inspected the floor for hidden mechanisms.
Saeroyx pushed gently against the immense doors.
Nothing happened.
The puppy sniffed the base of the structure before lying down with a bored yawn.
Another half hour passed.
Nothing.
Kyrth stepped back, frustration beginning to creep into his expression.
“If someone built doors…”
“…they intended for them to open.”
“But how?”
Saeroyx looked at the two empty handprints again.
They seemed strangely familiar.
Not because he had seen them before…
But because they felt as though they had been waiting.
Without thinking, he stepped closer.
Kyrth noticed immediately.
“What are you doing?”
“I…”
Saeroyx couldn’t explain it.
The same strange pull that had guided him through the hidden corridor had returned.
Gentler this time.
Patient.
Encouraging.
His heartbeat slowed instead of quickening.
Every instinct told him the answer wasn’t force.
It was recognition.
He slowly raised his hand.
His fingers hovered only a few centimeters above one of the carved handprints.
A faint warmth spread across his palm.
The sensation was unmistakable.
The door…
Was responding.
The silver veins running across the chamber floor brightened.
One by one, ancient symbols awakened around the enormous gateway.
Kyrth’s eyes widened.
“…Saeroyx.”
“I haven’t touched it.”
“I know.”
The handprint beneath Saeroyx’s palm began to glow softly, even though his skin had not yet made contact.
The ancient engravings across both doors shimmered like distant constellations awakening after countless ages of slumber.
The puppy stood.
Its silver eyes remained fixed upon the gateway.
The entire mountain seemed to grow quieter.
Waiting.
Watching.
Saeroyx slowly inhaled.
Then…
With deliberate care…
He placed his hand against the waiting imprint.
Nothing happened.
For a heartbeat.
Then another.
A deep resonance echoed from somewhere beyond the door.
Not a sound.
A feeling.
As if the mountain itself had taken a single, ancient breath.
A faint line of silver light appeared where the two colossal doors met.
It was the first crack anyone had seen.
Kyrth stepped closer, unable to hide his astonishment.
“It reacted…”
Saeroyx looked at his own hand, equally surprised.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“No.”
Kyrth’s gaze remained fixed on the widening line of light.
“You didn’t force it.”
A low rumble spread through the chamber.
Dust drifted from the ceiling.
The silver line grew brighter, though the doors themselves remained firmly shut.
The ancient mechanism had awakened…
But it had not yet fully accepted them.
Somewhere deep beyond the gateway…
Something had noticed that the first lock had finally recognized its rightful key.
The silver line separating the colossal doors widened little by little.
A deep, ancient rumble echoed throughout the mountain.
Stone ground against stone.
Dust drifted from the unseen ceiling as the enormous doors slowly parted, revealing only darkness beyond.
Cold air flowed outward.
It carried neither the scent of decay nor the dampness of a cave.
Instead, it smelled… still.
Like a place untouched by time.
Saeroyx and Kyrth exchanged a brief glance before stepping through together.
The puppy trotted after them without hesitation.
The moment all three crossed the threshold—
The doors silently closed behind them.
Neither of them looked back.
The chamber ahead was unlike anything they had seen before.
It was oval in shape, stretching hundreds of meters into the distance.
The ceiling arched gracefully overhead, supported by towering black columns that curved with the walls instead of standing straight.
Silver veins flowed through every surface, illuminating the hall with a calm, almost sacred light.
There was no dust.
No cobwebs.
No signs of collapse.
It looked as though someone had cleaned it only yesterday.
Kyrth’s attention was immediately drawn to the walls.
Every inch of polished stone had been carved with symbols.
Thousands upon thousands of them.
They formed continuous lines stretching around the entire chamber, interrupted only by enormous reliefs depicting battles, cities, strange machines, and creatures larger than mountains.
Saeroyx wandered ahead, looking from one carving to another.
“So…”
He glanced back.
“Can you read any of this?”
Kyrth stepped closer to the wall.
His eyes narrowed.
“…Some of it.”
“You understand this language?”
“No.”
He traced several characters with his fingers.
“I understand parts of it.”
Saeroyx blinked.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
Kyrth smiled faintly.
“I’ve spent years studying forgotten civilizations.”
“Most ancient languages borrow structures from older ones.”
“This script…”
He paused, examining another section.
“…shares similarities with at least six extinct writing systems.”
“So if I compare their grammar…”
“…and identify repeated patterns…”
“I should eventually understand the basics.”
Saeroyx folded his arms.
“I’ll pretend I understood that explanation.”
Kyrth ignored the comment.
The next half hour passed in complete concentration.
He carefully copied repeated symbols onto a small notebook.
Compared sentence structures.
Counted recurring names.
Matched identical phrases appearing beneath different carvings.
Meanwhile…
Saeroyx discovered he had absolutely nothing to do.
He walked around the chamber.
Examined the columns.
Counted the puppy’s footsteps.
Looked at the ceiling.
Returned to Kyrth.
“…Finished?”
“No.”
Five minutes later…
“…Now?”
“No.”
Another few minutes passed.
“So… what if the wall actually says, ‘Please stop touching me’?”
Silence.
“…Or maybe it says, ‘Congratulations, you’ve entered the wrong tomb.'”
Kyrth continued writing.
“…Or perhaps it’s a recipe.”
Still nothing.
Saeroyx sighed dramatically.
“I am beginning to think you like these walls more than me.”
Without looking up, Kyrth replied,
“They interrupt me less.”
Saeroyx placed a hand over his heart.
“…That was cruel.”
The puppy looked from one to the other before quietly sitting beside Kyrth, apparently deciding that translating walls was more interesting than listening to Saeroyx complain.
Nearly forty minutes later…
Kyrth finally stepped back.
His notebook was filled with translated fragments.
He looked at the carvings again.
Then slowly exhaled.
“I think…”
“…I’ve understood enough.”
Saeroyx immediately appeared beside him.
“Finally.”
“What does it say?”
Kyrth’s expression had become unusually serious.
“This isn’t simply a monument.”
His gaze swept across the endless chamber.
“It’s a historical archive.”
He pointed toward the first sequence of carvings.
“These inscriptions identify this place as the Royal Tomb of the Twenty-One Sovereigns.”
“The rulers of this kingdom…”
“…weren’t buried separately.”
“They all rest here.”
Saeroyx’s smile faded.
“Twenty-one generations?”
Kyrth nodded.
“And each generation added its own records before sealing the tomb again.”
He walked farther along the wall.
“There isn’t just genealogy.”
“There are military records.”
“Scientific observations.”
“Astronomical charts.”
“Descriptions of diseases.”
“Engineering methods.”
“And accounts of discoveries that no longer exist above ground.”
Saeroyx looked around the immense chamber with renewed interest.
“So this place is…”
“A library.”
Kyrth corrected him.
“No.”
“A memory.”
He stopped before an enormous mural carved across the wall.
The relief depicted towering creatures unlike anything either of them had ever imagined.
One resembled a serpent wrapped around an entire mountain.
Another possessed six enormous wings stretching across the sky.
One stood on four massive legs while countless smaller creatures fled beneath its shadow.
Kyrth slowly translated the inscription beneath them.
His voice grew quieter with every sentence.
“…These are called the Colossal Beasts.”
He swallowed.
“The records claim they once ruled large portions of the world.”
Saeroyx frowned.
“They’re myths.”
“So I thought.”
Kyrth shook his head.
“According to these inscriptions…”
“…they were real.”
He continued reading.
“The twenty-one royal generations fought against them across different eras.”
“Some were slain.”
“Some were sealed.”
“And…”
His voice trailed off.
Saeroyx looked at him.
“And?”
Kyrth stared silently at the final line.
When he finally spoke…
His expression had completely changed.
“…Some are still alive.”
The sacred silence of the tomb suddenly felt much heavier.
Even the little black puppy, who had been wandering curiously through the chamber, stopped and slowly turned toward the deepest part of the royal tomb.
As though…
It already knew where those ancient records would eventually lead.
The revelation lingered heavily in the air.
Neither Kyrth nor Saeroyx spoke for several minutes.
Kyrth carefully closed his notebook and placed it back into his satchel.
“We’ll continue translating later.”
Saeroyx nodded.
“There are thousands of years of records here. We won’t understand everything today.”
Together they continued deeper into the royal tomb.
The oval corridor stretched onward, lined with towering black sarcophagi. Every few dozen meters another stone coffin rested within an alcove, each bearing a different royal crest and a different name carved into the ancient script.
Twenty-one sovereigns.
Twenty-one generations.
Twenty-one silent witnesses to history.
Only their footsteps disturbed the sacred stillness.
Then…
A sound.
Kyrth stopped so abruptly that Saeroyx nearly walked into him.
“…Someone’s here.”
The noise came again.
A scrape of stone.
Then hurried footsteps.
Not one person.
Several.
Kyrth extinguished the small lantern he carried, leaving only the silver glow of the tomb to illuminate the corridor.
Both instinctively reached for their weapons.
The puppy also became alert, its ears lifting as it stared toward a side passage.
The footsteps grew louder.
Whoever they were…
They were heading toward them.
A shadow appeared first.
Then another.
Three figures emerged from the adjoining corridor, weapons already raised.
The moment they saw Kyrth and Saeroyx, they froze.
“…Impossible.”
One of them lowered his blade a fraction.
“Kyrth?”
Another stared at Saeroyx as though looking at a ghost.
“…You survived?”
For several seconds neither side moved.
Kyrth slowly lowered his weapon.
“I could ask you the same question.”
The three investigators finally relaxed.
One let out a long breath.
“When you both fell into the abyss…”
“…we searched the edge for nearly an hour.”
“There was nothing but darkness below.”
“We couldn’t even hear your voices.”
Another investigator shook his head.
“We thought there was no way anyone could survive that fall.”
Saeroyx smiled faintly.
“We were fortunate.”
The tallest among the three gave a weary laugh.
“So were we.”
He glanced back toward the passage they had emerged from.
“After the collapse, the remaining teams had no choice but to continue deeper.”
“The path eventually split again.”
“We lost more people.”
“Only the three of us managed to find this place.”
Kyrth’s expression darkened.
“So the others…”
The man lowered his head.
“We don’t know.”
“We became separated.”
“We searched for as long as we could.”
“But this mountain…”
He looked around the ancient tomb.
“…it doesn’t let people find each other easily.”
Silence settled between the two groups.
Only now did one of the investigators notice the tiny black puppy sitting neatly beside Saeroyx.
He blinked.
“…Why is there a puppy in a royal tomb?”
The puppy looked directly at him.
Then deliberately turned its head away with quiet dignity.
Saeroyx couldn’t help smiling.
“I don’t think it likes strangers.”
The investigator frowned.
“…I was just ignored by a puppy.”
Even Kyrth allowed himself the faintest smile before his attention returned to the passage ahead.
It seemed fate had reunited them.
But if three survivors had reached the royal tomb by a different route…
Then the mountain contained far more than a single path.
And that meant…
There were still unexplored passages beneath the Western Forest, each hiding secrets of its own.
