As he finally drifted into the crack of light that had appeared in the void, Kellen had to close his eyes to shield them from the blinding rays of light surrounding him.
"This energy feels disgustingly familiar..." Said Osiris in Kellen's head as the light engulfed them fully.
"Huh? Why would it be familiar... Wait... Don't tell me..." Said Kellen as he irritatingly began to remember the Goddess who had sent him to this world.
"Yep... I'm pretty sure it's her, but I can't imagine why she would be helping you escape from here after all these years..." Replied Osiris.
Suddenly, the blinding light surrounding him dimmed until it finally vanished leaving Kellen inside a strange dimly lit room. The light from earlier was still effecting his eyes as he rubbed them with his hands to try and make them adjust.
"What is this place?" Said Kellen cluelessly as he gazed around the ancient stone walled room he had appeared in.
"I don't know... Could be a dungeon or the basement of a castle for all I know..." Said Osiris unhelpfully.
Kellen began to investigate the strange area he found himself in as he brushed his hands across the dusty and crumbling stone brick walls around him. The room looked to be no bigger than a couple square meters and had a single rotting wooden door with rusted iron barring it from accessibility.
Seeing that there were no other items of interest, besides a couple of rotting wooden shelves and chairs, or other pathways he could take, Kellen approached the old door.
'This thing is barely even standing...' He thought as he ran his hands across the rusted and disintegrating iron bars that were the last things keeping the door from straight up falling.
Kellen shrugged his shoulders, after deciding there was no other action he could take besides busting down this door, before raising his one leg and kicking one of the old iron bars in the center of the rotting door.
Instead of a loud bang echoing throughout the room, only a sound of rotting wood breaking was heard, as the door fell to the floor with the iron bars supporting it giving way.
'Well that was easy.' Thought Kellen as he exited the dusty old room and found himself inside a crumbling stone brick hallway. The torches that lined it's walls seemed to be all shriveled up and unusable while parts of the walls bordering the long hallway were caved in or ultimately non-existent.
Kellen carefully walked through the crumbling hallway towards the broken stairs he could barely see through the dim lighting.
"Hm... I retract my previous statement... This is definitely the ruins of a castle..." Said Osiris as Kellen climbed the half broken stairs leading to the grand view of a demolished throne room and vegetation covered walls.
"You think?" Replied Kellen as he walked over to the golden throne that was half missing.
Standing in front of the ruined throne, Kellen was reminded of the time when he was first summoned to this world along with the Romans back from that hellish laboratory.
'It feels like a millennium since then... Well I guess for me it was technically two...'
The scars of Kellen's past were still fresh in his mind, especially after having to relive some of his worst memories because of Nergal.
"Let's look around and see if we can figure out where we are kid." Said Osiris from within his mind which brought him back to the present reality.
"You know more about this world than I do since I only ever saw the insides of the Myrian castle and was then thrown into the void." Replied Kellen as he remembered those bitter people.
"Well I can't determine our location from just a bunch of remains of a castle, so go and scout the area out a little."
Kellen listened to the old man and climbed one of the crumbling walls of the throne room. The old and busted walls continued to crumble and send pieces of stone flying out from under his feet as he scaled them to reach the side of a spire that had a hole in its side.
The flimsy walls did not make his movements easy but Kellen still managed as he jumped from the tops of different crumbling walls before reaching the caved in section of the old spire.
'I need a pretty high location if I want to get a good vantage point to look at our surroundings.' Thought Kellen as he raced up the creaky and crumbling stone steps he found within the busted walls of the spire.
Eventually, he maneuvered his way to the roof of the crumbling spire and grabbed hold of the bent pyre at the peak to steady his foothold.
"This is insane..." Said Kellen to himself as he gazed out over a dilapidated kingdom with broken districts and houses overgrown with vegetation.
He figured the old ruins was probably once a thriving and bustling empire due to the sheer scale of it but it had now been degraded to nothing but old ruins.
Some tattered banners could be seen on some of the broken walls bordering the city beneath him but their colors were extremely worn and now bland.
"Any idea as to what this place used to be?" Asked Kellen as he continued to stare out over the crumbling city in awe.
"I think I have a pretty good guess but I'm still unsure... See if you can collect or get closer to one of those banners." Directed Osiris while lost inside his old mental encyclopedia of a mind.
Kellen let go of his hold on the pyre and slid off the roof of the towering spire in a sideways motion and grabbed a hold of a nearby thick vine that was growing out from its walls.
Using this thick vine like a climbing rope , he slowly rappelled down the crumbling spire until he kicked off from the wall and landed on the almost completely missing roof of what looked like a barrack.
Right when his feet touched the unsteady roof, it gave way, and he fell through it into the interior of the building.
He coughed as he stood up from the dust cloud created by the falling rubble and looked around the old guard barrack like building.
"I don't see anything left... It must have all been looted or perishable, and disintegrated over the years..." Said Kellen as he scanned what remained within the ruined guard barrack.
"Well it probably doesn't help that you and the roof decided to fall on everything that could've been left here..." Mumbled Osiris but was ignored by Kellen, as the kid began to search for any objects that could possibly reveal the identity of their current location.
"Hey! What about this?" Said Kellen as he lifted up an old metal hilt of what once probably housed a fine blade.
In the center of where the blade and its hilt would be connected resided a unique insignia or crest of an unknown origin to Kellen, but he was still fascinated by its peculiarity.
"Ah! How could I have not recognized this place before! That insignia signified the authority of the Berylus kingdom... They were one of the most powerful and one of the leading human kingdoms for centuries..." Said Osiris in astonishment.
"So why did they end up like this then if they were all that great as you say?" Replied Kellen as he turned the hilt in his hand to study the intricate design of the insignia more.
"Who knows kid... You'll probably learn this eventually, but all things, no matter how great, will change with the passing of time. Even kingdoms that could unite the continents would eventually fall into a battle of attrition with time." Said Osiris in a prophetic voice that seemed to show a glimmer of wisdom.
"Of course, history often leaves us some clues on what could or should have happened. Look around the ruins some more, with enough time, and I'm sure it wouldn't be to difficult to figure out what happened here..."
Kellen tucked the interesting hilt of the sword in his back pocket and walked out of the barracks to look around the ruins as Osiris continued to drone on.
He noticed that certain sections of the walls surrounding the city and even the ones near the palace section had dark ash like marks stained on some of their old surfaces. It looked almost like lightning had struck the walls of the great kingdom.
'I wonder what could have left those kinds of scorch marks...' Thought Kellen, while he let Osiris continue to ramble on in his head like a old man enjoying his storytelling, as he made his way through the ruined lower city to exit the kingdom.
Kellen wasn't sure where he was exactly, but according to Osiris they must be somewhere within the human continents. However, he continued to feel more excited as the mere seconds passed by while he passed through the collapsing city.
'Finally! It's time to track down the Romans!'
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Hey guys, sorry for the delayed release. I felt extremely ill and had to go to the hospital. It's not COVID but it's still really painful unfortunately. I will try to release as much as possible, as long as I have enough strength and energy! I really like writing this story so I hope to push through this quickly and continue to burst out more chapters. Much love guys!