Although the stone door blocked the way behind him, windblown sand still passed through that stone and blew out from the rear, as though the door were only an illusion. A snake emblem was carved upon it—not Lord of the Ring's Ouroboros symbol, but an unusual black two-headed snake. Shade guessed it was Mr. Snake's personal crest.
The power seeping from the area beyond the door had already completely reached the level of Before the Doomsday. Now, before obtaining the second Ring of Fate and with [Night Watchman] not in hand, Shade naturally would not rashly barge inside.
He stared at the stone door at the end of the passage, imagining what scene might lie beyond it. At that moment, the sphere of light illuminated the walls on both sides of the dark corridor again, revealing murals that had been severely eroded by wind and sand.
The corridor belonged to an original part of the temple. It depicted scenes from the place where Believers of Destiny had once gathered. Those scenes had all vanished at the end of the First Epoch, yet the Outlander standing in the era of the Sixth Epoch could still glimpse the appearance of that beginning era through them.
"Did the last diviner to leave this place also look back here? And how was what he or she saw different from what I see?"
The Outlander thought this as he took two steps into the sand-swept corridor, then saw a spring depicted in the mural. Water trickled down from the rock wall, forming a small pool beneath it. Though the mural's colors had already peeled away, Shade understood that this was the place Stella and the others were searching for.
Ten minutes earlier, below the cliffside on the northern side of the Mountain Top Ruins, where