The director of the Chronicle Court stood before the wall, his head tilted back, his gray-white beard trembling slightly. His lips moved several times before he managed to squeeze out a sentence.
"It really... really exists..."
His voice was very quiet, as though he feared disturbing something sleeping within the murals.
He was the director of the Chronicle Court, one of the Eastern Continent's most renowned scholars. He had spent his entire life studying ancient civilizations-those ancient existences buried by time, forgotten by humanity, surviving only in scattered words in legends and myths.
He had pored over countless ancient texts, deciphered countless inscriptions, and walked through countless ruins. He had thought he had seen all the truths of this world, that the key he held was enough to open every dust-sealed door.
Yet now, standing before these murals, he realized he knew nothing.
These murals had not been painted with pigments. They were made from the powder of some mineral he had never seen before, faintly luminous in the darkness, inlaid into the cracks in the rock.
The lines were rough and powerful, the colors monotonous yet stunning, as though some ancient creature had carved out its memories with its claws, stroke by stroke.
In the mural, a gigantic dragon-shaped creature fell from the sky. Countless fine, glowing lines entwined its body, and it seemed to be struggling, yet also seemed to be sleeping.
In the second mural, the dragon-shaped creature had opened its eyes. A single eye occupied the entire wall. That eye was not round; it had a vertical pupil, like that of some reptile.
The vertical pupil in the mural was inlaid with a blood-red mineral that gave off a dim red glow in the darkness, like a real, living eye watching everyone who stood before it.
The third, the fourth... the murals extended into the depths of the vaulted ceiling. Some had been covered by rock, others eroded by water until they were indistinct, but the portions that remained still radiated a suffocating aura of extreme antiquity.
"This place... is probably tens of thousands of years old." The director's voice echoed through the empty underground space, carrying a tremor he himself had not noticed.
"Tens of thousands?" Marquis Darkblood raised an eyebrow. "More than that, surely."
He walked up to a mural, extended his pale fingers, and gently touched the mineral powder on the stone wall. The powder did not fall away. Instead, it brightened slightly, as though responding to his touch.
"The energy fluctuations in these minerals... are ancient. Too ancient for me to recognize." Marquis Darkblood withdrew his hand and sniffed his fingertips, his brows drawing together slightly. "Older than the oldest records of the blood race."
Duke Desolation did not look at the murals. He stood in the center of the bottom of the pit, his eyes closed, as though sensing something. His brow furrowed more and more tightly, his eyeballs moving slightly beneath his lids, as though tracking an invisible target.
"There's something... here." He opened his eyes, his voice low. "Something alive."
The leading black-robed man said nothing. He merely stood there, his gray-white eyes turned toward the largest mural deep within the vaulted ceiling. That vertical pupil met his gaze in the darkness, as though silently communicating something.
"Truly incredible..." The director of the Chronicle Court was still marveling, his voice echoing through the empty underground space with the wild joy of a scholar discovering a treasure trove.
"All these years, and no one ever discovered this place... these murals, these minerals, these energy fluctuations... if we could bring them back to the academy to study..."
"I'm afraid you don't have time for that." Marquis Darkblood interrupted him, a trace of impatience in his tone. "We're not here to tour a museum."
The director opened his mouth, wanting to argue, then closed it again. He glanced at the leading black-robed man, then at Duke Desolation, and finally took a step back, shifting his gaze from the murals toward a spot farther into the bottom of the pit.
There stood an altar.
The altar was not large, only about three or four meters in diameter. It was circular, built from some kind of black stone with a smooth surface. The stones were densely covered in carved runes. Some the director recognized, some he did not, and still more he had never even seen before. The lines of the runes were extremely fine, so fine they seemed to have been engraved stroke by stroke with a needle tip. They glimmered dark red in the darkness, like dried-up blood vessels.
There was a depression in the center of the altar, irregular in shape, as though something had pressed it in from above.
The leading black-robed man stepped forward and took something from inside his robes.
It was a black-and-red crystal.
The crystal was fist-sized and irregularly shaped, its surface covered in tiny facets and cracks. Its color was not uniform. Instead, black and red intertwined like blood spreading through water, pulsing faintly in the darkness like a heart that was still beating.
The leading black-robed man held the crystal in his palm, gazing at it with his gray-white eyes in silence for a moment.
Then he let go.
The crystal did not fall, but floated in midair. It slowly rose, as though supported by an invisible hand, and flew toward the center of the altar. Its black-and-red light traced an arc through the darkness, like a falling meteor, before settling into the depression at the altar's center.
Click.
A crisp sound rang out, like a bone breaking. The crystal fitted into the depression, perfectly flush with the altar's surface, as though it had originally been dug out of this very spot.
"Please begin, everyone." The leading black-robed man stepped back and bowed slightly to those behind him. "Channel your mana into the altar."
Duke Desolation glanced at him, said nothing, and raised his hand. Gray-white mana surged from his palm like a river compressed to its utmost limit, crashing into the altar. The impact stirred a ring of dark red ripples across its surface. The ripples spread outward, struck the walls, and rebounded, like some ancient pulse.
Marquis Darkblood extended his pale fingers, and a dark red bead of blood formed at a fingertip. The blood fell from his finger and hovered in midair, slowly rotating, then turned into a thread of blood as fine as a strand of hair and flowed silently into the altar.
The director of the Chronicle Court hesitated for an instant, then extended his hand as well. His mana was pale blue, pure and gentle, like a still pool of lake water.
Unlike the others' mana, his stirred no ripples and made no sound as it entered the altar. It simply merged quietly into it, like water seeping into sandy soil.
The other figures also began one after another. Some used magic, some used battle aura, and some used energies the director could not name, which belonged to no known system of power. The altar absorbed all the energy without wasting the slightest trace.
As it absorbed the energy, the altar began to change.
Dark red light shone from the runes on the altar's surface, weak and flickering at first, as though hesitating. Then it grew brighter and steadier, finally becoming a dazzling curtain of light that covered the entire altar.
The light spread upward from the altar, following the pit's stone walls, the lines of the murals, and those ancient runes buried by time, climbing all the way to the vaulted ceiling.
The entire underground space shook.
It was not an earthquake. The altar was breathing. Every surge of energy was like a heartbeat-thump, thump, thump-deep and powerful, making their chests go numb and their eardrums ache.
"What the hell?" Marquis Darkblood's expression changed.
He felt it.
The mana being drawn from his body was not being consumed by the altar, but... devoured. Like a bottomless pit, it could not be filled no matter how much energy they poured into it. Instead, its pull only grew fiercer. His mana was draining at an abnormal rate, so fast he could not even replenish it in time.
"Damn it!" Duke Desolation could not help cursing either. His brows knotted tightly, veins bulging on his forehead as gray-white mana was frantically extracted from his body, as though someone had thrust a thick straw into him.
He had lived for over a thousand years and had never experienced having his energy forcibly extracted like this.
"Are you trying to get us killed, you brat?!" Anger filled Duke Desolation's voice as his gray-white eyes fixed on the leading black-robed man.
The leading black-robed man did not answer.
He stood at the edge of the altar, his gray-white eyes fixed on the black-and-red crystal at its center, his expression unchanged. He reached into his robes and took out a bottle of dark red potion, bit out the stopper, tilted his head back, and drank it down.
The potion flowed down his throat. His throat bobbed several times, producing a muffled gulp.
Then he raised his hand and continued channeling mana into the altar.
Duke Desolation's curses did not shake him. Marquis Darkblood's doubts did not make him turn back. The director's hesitation did not make him wait.
He simply stood there like a machine programmed in advance, mechanically, tirelessly, almost self-destructively feeding his power into the altar.
The others could only keep holding on.
Duke Desolation gritted his teeth. Sweat ran down the wrinkles of his forehead and dripped onto the rock beneath his feet with faint pattering sounds. His body trembled slightly, not from cold, but from the physical reaction to excessive mana extraction, like the shivering of someone who had lost too much blood.
Marquis Darkblood's face was even paler than usual, so pale it was almost translucent. His lips were pressed tightly together, his eyelids lowered, his long, thick lashes casting fan-shaped shadows over his cheeks. His mana was being extracted even faster than Duke Desolation's.
Fine beads of sweat formed on the director's forehead. His mana reserves had never been as deep as the others', and now they were nearly exhausted.
His breathing grew rapid, his chest heaving. The pale blue glow of mana flickered in his palm, growing weaker and dimmer, like an oil lamp about to burn out.
The others were not much better off.
Time passed, minute by minute, second by second. No one knew how long it had been. In this underground space without sunlight, starlight, or any point of reference, time became hazy and viscous, like frozen honey, every second requiring effort to move.
At last.
The black-and-red crystal at the altar's center suddenly erupted with a dazzling light.
The light did not come from the crystal's surface. It burst from within-from its core.
That light pierced the crystal's facets, the altar's runes, and everyone's eyelids and pupils, illuminating the entire underground space as brightly as day.
The light lasted roughly three seconds, then abruptly went out.
It did not slowly dim. It vanished all at once, as though someone had flipped a switch.
The entire underground space plunged into a darkness deeper than before.
Everyone stopped what they were doing.
Duke Desolation gasped for breath, his stooped body swaying slightly like an old tree that might be blown down at any moment. Marquis Darkblood's face was white as paper. He lowered his head and looked at his fingers, pale to the point of translucence, a barely perceptible trace of exhaustion flashing in his eyes.
The director of the Chronicle Court collapsed straight onto the ground, bracing himself with both hands and gasping for breath. Sweat dripped from his forehead onto the ground, soon gathering into a small puddle.
"It's ready... it's ready..."
The leading black-robed man murmured. His voice was very soft, as faint as an echo from somewhere far away. His body was trembling too, but his eyes did not tremble. Something burned within those gray-white eyes.
"Great... my lord."
His voice echoed through the underground space, like a stone dropped into an ancient well of unfathomable depth.
"Tens of thousands of years ago... long before the era... in the age when the gods existed."
The runes on the altar's surface began to flicker slowly and rhythmically, like a heart awakening, slowly opening its eyes from slumber.
"You who already existed... in the age when humanity was still ignorant..."
The air changed.
It was not a change in temperature or humidity. Something more fundamental, more indescribable was changing. It was as though the air had suddenly gained a weight that pressed down on the shoulders of everyone present, leaving them unable to breathe.
Duke Desolation's brow tightened further, Marquis Darkblood's pupils contracted slightly, and the director even took an unconscious step back.
"The dragon of destruction... whom even the gods fear."
At the center of the altar, the black-and-red crystal split open.
It did not crumble into powder. Instead, it split neatly in two along the fine cracks on its surface. Dark red light poured from the split, so thick it resembled liquid.
It flowed down along the altar's depression, seeping into the gaps in the runes, into the patterns of the stone walls, into every inch of soil and rock deep underground.
The entire space trembled.
The murals on the walls began to glow. Those lines inlaid with mineral powder seemed to have been infused with life, lighting up one by one, pulsing, breathing, all conveying the same message to the existence sleeping in the abyss.
Someone had come.
The split at the altar's center grew wider and wider, the dark red light brighter and brighter, until everyone present had to narrow their eyes.
At the center of the light, something was slowly rising-no, not rising, awakening. An ancient will that had slept for tens of thousands of years, for several eras, was raising its head from the abyss.
The leading black-robed man knelt.
He knelt before the altar, his forehead pressed to the cold ground, his hands spread open, palms upward, like the most devout believer offering his final prayer to his god.
"Silencer of the gods..."
His voice rose from the ground, low, hoarse, and trembling, as though he had spent the last of his strength.
"Voraksa."
Dark red light devoured everything.