Deep within Violet Island, at the edge of the desolate wilderness where the City of a Thousand Towers should theoretically have stood, the Cecil and Typhon exploration teams rendezvoused. After consultation, they set up camp in two clearings barely a hundred meters apart. The well-trained Iron Rangers and Ranger guards began patrolling around the camps and checking the nearby traps and warning runes—they had to finish before the last streak of sunset disappeared beyond the horizon.
It was already dusk, with night drawing near. Whether Cecil or Typhon explorers, everyone became especially tense at this hour. Though the gods' power had left this pocket of reality, hundreds of thousands of years of dream corruption had permanently altered Violet Island's environment and even its natural laws. Shadow Power here was dense and highly active, and bizarre, incomprehensible dangers often lurked where shadows overlapped.
Perhaps they were cracks leading to the Shadow Realm, perhaps strange lights and shadows capable of corrupting the mind and causing temporary madness, or perhaps even passages through which Shadow Dwellers invaded the real world... Phenomena never encountered in ordinary life were commonplace amid that interwoven light and darkness. As sunlight faded and night fell, the likelihood of such anomalies reached its peak. The abnormalities that emerged at night were enough to make unwelcome visitors understand more clearly why the goddess who held dominion over shadows was called the Night Lady.
Of course, the Cecil expedition had a powerful and experienced Legendary Adventurer like Modir Wilde among them, but even so, the soldiers did not dare relax and blindly trust that the old mage alone could contend with every danger on the island—because Modir himself did not believe that either...
While the soldiers of both camps heightened their vigilance and prepared to face another night on the island,