Acrisios walked through a rather cramped hallway into a much smaller room within the fortress. This was the highest security chamber, which served as a council room for the king and his right-hand man and led further into and below the castle to the Remembrance's sarcophagus.
To either side of the inner hallways, pairs of dark armored guards stood still as statues, with short swords strapped to their sides.
These guards were part of a secret and very specialized division, simply named Onyx Division.
Guards of Onyx Division are trained since birth in restrictive magic and everything that falls under it, such as sealing magic.
Reaching the same massive wooden doors, Acrisios ordered the pair of guards outside. "Open the doors!"
The guard count almost tripled since the last time Acrisios stepped here, mainly so the guards could pump more mana into the remaining seals, hopefully slowing the Remembrance's power.
'It amounted close to nothing, it seems.' Acrisios thought, increasingly troubled by the relic. 'If even triple the mana input does little to nothing to slow the Remembrence's unsealing, how could we hope to restrain this beast?'
The king subtly frowned as the thought of ultimately evacuating the castle and the royal capital wormed its way into his mind. The worst thing was that he couldn't even push this thought aside. Right now, he must prepare for the worst and pray to the Gods above for the best.
There was little he could do, it seemed. Pouring massive amounts of mana into the remaining seals didn't seem to elicit the faintest of responses, while the Maoruns failed to provide satisfactory seals time and time again.
The Onyx guards bowed and opened the door with fluid moves as if they had done this their whole life.
As the doors opened, Acrisios heard faint steps behind him but didn't turn around. His senses were accurate enough to see Theodos walk calmly toward his liege.
Stopping a step behind Acrisios, Theodos bowed and greeted the king.
Nodding, Acrisios motioned for his councilor to cut the pleasantries and get to the point. "Fill me in."
"Yes, Your Majesty. My latest reports state the seals present in the Remembrance's sarcophagus began a rapid degradation today at six."
"Any signs of foreign magic within the sarcophagus?" Acrisios asked as he and Theodos stepped within the even more cramped tunnel that led to the Remembrance's chamber.
The same dark fog hugged the floor tiles tightly, and it seemed that whatever this fluid was acted a lot like water, flowing between the cracks of the floor tiles.
Theodos shook his head. "None, Your Majesty. In fact, every reading was normal, so we are not sure what prompted this rapid degradation."
Acrisios frown deepened, and he turned to one of the guards nearby. "Go to the Maoruns. Tell them to get here within the hour."
As soon as he was done, the king turned around and paid no more attention to the guard, but the sound of footsteps told him his order was followed.
"Any noteworthy activity recently? Did anyone come here recently?"
Theodos frowned slightly. "Besides the Maorun's Matriarch and a few of her top researchers, no." The councilor stopped himself, seeing the troubled look on his liege's face. "Your Majesty, do you believe the Maourns had something to do with this?"
"I cannot be sure," Acrisios answered non-committal as he and Theodos approached the end of the tunnel.
In the distance, a warm yellow light poured out of a broken wall, illuminating the last dozen meters of the tunnel, and even the air felt heavier than it should.
A thump-like sound, like the beating of a heart, came from somewhere within the chamber, vibrating the rooks and tunnel walls.
Acrisios ignored all of this, his steps not faltering even when the vibrating walls made walking almost impossible for a weak cultivator. Even to the naked eye, the floor and walls jumped an inch or two in every direction.
The pebbles present on the floor were thrown in the air with such force that one would think they were shot out of a sling. A normal human would break his legs if they ever wandered through this tunnel, yet Acrisios and Theodos seemed to glide across the shaking floor as if they didn't need a solid surface to walk.
Crossing the last dozen meters, Acrisios entered the sarcophagus, facing the Remembrance in all its glory.
A massive, round object floated in the air, composed of interlinking chain links, minimally hiding the Remembrance's core, a ring of shape-shifting runes that glowed with a bright and warm yellow light, outshining every other source of light within the room.
Despite the Remembrance not going anywhere, heavy blood-red chains bounded the sphere to the four corners of the room, keeping it in place.
All six walls were covered in the same shape-shifting runes, yet they looked somewhat different. These Seal Runes changed shape slowly, more deliberately, as if to counter every change of the Remembrance.
If the Core Runes were fast and aggressive, like a caged beast, the Seal Runes was like a calm, wide river.
There was no way to properly access the tomb, hence its name. Acrisios looked towards the corner opposite the makeshift entrance to the place where they first found a human skeleton. Whoever sealed the Remembrance remained trapped as well for who knows how long.
Despite the long passing of time, Acrisios was amazed by the power contained within the lifeless bones of the unnamed cultivator. There was nothing else besides the skeleton. No clothes, no accessories, nothing. Yet, the bones themselves remained intact, with no signs of damage or erosion.
The king shook his head and focused on the Seal Runes. He was no researcher, no Seal Master, but he could tell something was wrong.
What should have been shape-shifting runes were now trembling, static runes, as if locked in space and time, without room to change, to respond to the Remembrance.
"What shall we do, Your Majesty?" Theodos asked as he could bear the silent atmosphere no longer.
Acrisios sighed and turned to face the Remembrance. "There is little we alone could do in this situation. The Maoruns have been alerted, so we shall wait." Looking at the unmoving runes on the walls, the king continued. "Let's hope they can now better study these runes."