When night fell, Grey had reached the top of the tower without any issues. From there, he watched the sky turn a deep shade, patiently waiting for darkness to fully envelop him before finding some rest.
As the last ray of sunlight vanished over the horizon, a deep rumble echoed from somewhere within the crimson labyrinth. Grey tensed immediately, his senses sharp. Then he saw it: a tide of black water surged forward, sweeping over the labyrinth with unstoppable force.
But something caught his attention, freezing his blood.
The jet-black surface of the tower began to faintly glow. Mystical runes emerged from its walls, shimmering with an arcane energy. These formed a thin but firm barrier that stretched over the entire city.
Grey leapt to his feet, Odyssey in hand, ready for any threat. His eyes remained fixed on the phenomenon before him.
The tide of black water crashed against the barrier with a deafening roar but was stopped cold. As if sentient, the water encircled the city, searching for cracks in its defense, before retreating deeper into the labyrinth.
Grey stood motionless, his eyes wide, unable to look away from the spectacle.
"How... how is this even possible? Who could have created such a colossal barrier? This doesn't make any sense."
Heart still racing, he approached the edge of the tower's peak to get a closer look at the runes adorning its walls. He examined them with a mix of fascination and confusion.
"They're strange... They don't resemble any runic language I've studied. But they don't have the structure of a common language either."
As his gaze traced the marks, he noticed that, despite their evident wear, the runes radiated overwhelming power.
"What kind of runic sorcery is this? It seems so powerful... even in this deteriorated state."
He lifted his gaze toward the fallen city stretching out before him. His thoughts revolved around the meaning of what he had just witnessed.
"This tower is the reason the city wasn't obliterated by the sea… and it still stands, though time and neglect have left their mark."
His eyes shifted to the invisible barrier covering the city like a spherical dome, glowing faintly under the darkness that now cloaked the world. Then he focused on the other six towers scattered around the perimeter.
"If those six also reinforce the barrier… what could they have been defending against to warrant such a massive protection?"
The mere thought chilled him to the bone.
He couldn't fathom anything terrifying enough to justify an entire city depending on structures imbued with such complex and powerful runic sorcery. What kind of enemy or threat had driven its inhabitants to such extremes?
With those grim thoughts swirling in his mind, Grey stepped away from the edge and returned to the center of the platform. He sat in silence, trying to quell the unease gnawing at him, as he awaited the dawn.
...
With his eyes closed in the center of the platform, he adopted a meditative posture, letting the silence envelop him. It was then he heard a faint, almost imperceptible sound—the black sea retreating slowly. His eyelids lifted, and the dim light of the rising sun illuminated his silver eyes.
A new day began under the gray sky stretched out like a shroud.
"Good morning to me, I guess," he muttered with a mix of sadness and melancholy.
He stood and stretched, feeling the stiffness in his muscles after staying awake all night. His eyes turned again to the edge of the platform, gazing at the ruined city sprawling below.
"I suppose it's time to take a closer look at that mural."
With renewed curiosity, Grey approached the tower's edge. He watched as the transparent barrier that had covered the city during the night slowly faded, and the runes carved into the tower's walls lost their glow.
"A mechanism that differentiates between night and day? How does something like this work? Fascinating."
The young man gripped Odyssey tightly, ready to descend, but just before taking the first step, he froze. A flicker of doubt crossed his face.
"I shouldn't damage this tower more than it already is."
With a resigned sigh, he dismissed Odyssey, letting the weapon vanish into thin air.
Instead, he opted for the traditional way of descending, recalling the lessons Professor Julius had once taught him and Sunless. Using his own hands to descend was slower but more respectful of the structure that had shielded him through the night.
The descent was arduous, and Grey soon felt the strain from his lack of practice. His hands began to ache sooner than expected, but he didn't let that stop him.
At last, his feet touched the stone ground. Wasting no time, he began walking toward the city's center, where the mural awaited amid the remnants of a forgotten civilization.
His progress was swift; this time, he didn't stop to observe the collapsed houses or debris lining the path. Grey pressed on with determination toward the murals that had captured his curiosity from the start.
In the city's center, the murals stood in a circle, towering and solemn, surrounding a central piece. Each one seemed to tell a unique story, with intricate paintings that evoked bygone eras and forgotten mysteries.
"Let's see what we have here," he murmured as he stepped forward.
With bright, expectant eyes, he stopped in front of the first mural. The painting depicted a man cloaked in white, crowned with a halo of light above his head. He stood over the corpse of a monstrous abomination, a creature whose body was too immense to take in at once.
The man's face was shrouded in shadow, eclipsed by the golden glow of a radiant sun behind him. In his right hand, he held something Grey couldn't identify, while the tip of his sword glowed intensely, as if harnessing the light of the very sun.
Below the painting, carved runes translated automatically through the spell, revealing the following message:
[In lands abandoned and ravaged by maddened creatures, only the worthy bearer of the Crown of Light is fit to bring hope to the people of the dawn.]
"'A worthy bearer'? Worthy of what exactly?" Grey pondered, leaning forward slightly. "Someone with noble ideals, perhaps a hero? And it seems he claimed these lands after defeating that thing... Could he have been the savior of this city?"
Intrigued, he moved on to the next mural with newfound interest.
The second painting depicted an entirely different scene. Beneath the golden glow of a radiant sun, the beginnings of the city's construction were shown. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of humans worked tirelessly, raising walls, homes, and streets in unison. Their sculpted bodies were adorned with white robes trimmed with gold, giving them an air of solemnity and power.
The runes beneath read:
[With the defeat of the maddened creatures, a new city is born under the glow of a new dawn. The City of Light raises its foundations through the strength of a thousand men.]
"Ah, so this is an origin story for the city!" he exclaimed in awe. "I wonder what rank that man worthy of the Crown of Light held... Maybe he was a transcendent. That would be incredible."
His excitement drove him to advance to the third mural, where a noticeable shift in tone and style set it apart from the earlier ones.
This time, the scene depicted a deep and all-encompassing night. Darkness blanketed the world like a shroud, yet the stars shone brightly above the city, illuminating it with a gentle and purifying glow.
What stood out most to Grey, however, was the figure dominating the night sky: a majestic creature soaring through the heavens, brighter than any star.
It was a colossal bird, its outstretched wings large enough to cover the entire city. Its beak, as massive as a small building, seemed capable of cleaving anything in two, while its tail, long as a train, stretched toward the horizon. Its golden feathers shone with an intensity reminiscent of the sun, blending its radiant light with the dawn.
Fascinated, Grey looked down at the carved runes, which the spell translated accurately:
[Surrounded by darkness, the noble creature announces its presence to the citizens of light with its beautiful radiance, akin to the sun on the horizon at dawn, bringing with it both the light and the darkness it embodies.]
"Noble creatures? What does that mean?" Grey leaned in to reread the runes and study the image depicted. He did so several times but still couldn't fully grasp its meaning.
"That thing—the noble creature—is enormous. Could it be a type of animal from the realm of dreams before the corruption? But... why call them noble? Nobility refers to beings of prestigious lineage, like a high-status family. So, does noble creature mean it belongs to some special class of creatures with distinguished lineages?"
Unfortunately, his questions would remain unanswered for now.
After a final analysis of the mural, Grey moved on to the next one and stopped before the fourth.
Here, the City of Light's center was represented again, but instead of murals, there was a grand altar spanning the entire plaza. At the altar's center, the same noble creature rested while six men dressed in golden robes chanted solemn praises.
Among them, a seventh figure wore a golden halo on his head—the Crown of Light. This man held a strange object in his right hand as he knelt before the creature.
The luminous bird kept its neck and head held high, its snow-white eyes fixed on the man with cold indifference. Its feathers, though still radiant, seemed noticeably dimmer.
'Wait...' Grey thought, noticing something strange.
He leaned slightly, focusing his attention on the shadows of the men in golden robes. Deep within those shadows, a pair of crimson orbs burned intensely.
Grey frowned, feeling as though he had seen something similar before. Then, his eyes widened as he recalled the shadow that had emerged to stab the Nephilim in the underground murals.
"They look like that shadow…" he muttered, motionless, while carefully analyzing the image before stepping back to observe it as a whole.
He studied it for a long time before lowering his gaze to the inscription beneath the mural:
[Sometimes, humans and even the noblest creatures must distrust their own shadow. After all, the shadow was the most treacherous and mysterious of all.]
"This... I think I should have studied more about the history of the realm of dreams."
With suspicion lingering in his mind, Grey hurried back to the first mural and fixed his gaze on the shadow of the man standing over the dead abomination.
"Damn it..."
There, deep within that shadow, were the same crimson orbs.
Grey stood in thought for a moment. What were these shadowy creatures that appeared at pivotal moments in this land? Why did they act as they did, and what was their purpose? He had no answers, and likely never would.
With that grim thought, but his curiosity still burning in the silver sea of his eyes, Grey made his way to the fifth mural.
When he saw it, his face shifted to a mix of surprise and resignation:
The noble creature had succumbed to darkness and now soared through the starry skies, its light slowly consumed by black streaks coiling around its immense body.
Below it, the city of light was in chaos. The streets were destroyed; men, women, and children ran in desperation. At the center of it all stood the same seven figures.
The seven men raised their arms as seven black towers emerged from the earth at the city's borders. From these, mysterious runes glowed, rising into the sky and converging upon the noble creature, consumed by its own darkness.
"Seems like things really went wrong... Damn it."
He lowered his gaze and read the mural's description:
[When madness fell upon the beloved messenger of the skies, the priests of light invoked the ancient words to seal the madness and quell the fury of the darkness.]
"So..." Grey directed his gaze toward the six collapsed rune towers and then to the seventh—the worn-down tower where he had spent the night.
"It's the last tower sealing the maddened creature."
A chill ran down his spine. The idea that the unstable structure was the last barrier between them and the creature was unsettling.
"At least it's still standing, right?"
He took a deep breath and calmed himself before continuing to the next image.
The sixth mural depicted a night where stars fell like meteors, descending directly upon the city of light.
There was something familiar about those stars, but Grey couldn't recall what it was.
Beneath the invisible barrier protecting the city, it seemed to have been largely restored. The houses, though still affected, were mostly rebuilt, and the altar had vanished.
In its place stood six murals surrounding a seventh at the center, where an artifact with a unique rune rested.
Grey recognized the object as the one held by the man with the golden crown.
At the city's borders, the seven black towers were now intact, their glowing runes creating a massive dome-shaped barrier.
"So, in the end, they managed to restore the city, but they perished against an unknown enemy..."
'I wonder what purpose that artifact serves.'
Grey read the runes beneath the mural:
[When the darkness was sealed, fragments of its former brilliance besieged the city of light like meteors falling from the black skies of the dark night.]
"I feel like I'm missing something important."
With that thought, he turned around and set his gaze on the seventh and final mural, located at the center of them all.
"Damnation..."
______
Note: Well, what can I say, right? I guess I'm starting to get bored of writing this fic 🥲
Although the scene I started writing for is getting close, and that at least keeps me minimally motivated to get there, I feel super lazy when it comes to writing the chapters. So, I apologize if they take a long time to come out.
By the way, does anyone remember how much time passed from when they left the Forgotten Shore to Nephis' return? 😅