I remember it all too well—how could I forget? My mother's grip on me, as if by holding me close, she could shield us both from the carnage. Her heartbeat thundered against my back, a hollow drumbeat almost drowning out the real war drums, each beat like a distant death knell rolling over the city walls. A comforting sound, perhaps, but as useless as a broken sword.
Around us, chaos erupted. Citizens scattered, but there was nowhere to run, no sanctuary. The warning horn blared again, a shrill reminder of the coming assault, and the city walls—once symbols of strength—now loomed like iron shackles, hemming us in as death closed in.
In a final, desperate stand, Awakened citizens—those with rare powers—surged forward. Warriors wielded blades wreathed in flame; mages sent bolts of fire and lightning crackling into the night. They stood side by side with city guards, their spells clashing with Zahlani sorcery, filling the darkness with flashes of crimson and gold. For a fleeting moment, the defenders' powers seemed like they might be enough.
But the Zahlani war machines advanced, relentless and merciless, crushing everything beneath them. The streets of Amara ran red, the golden stones drenched in blood, and the Awakened—no matter their strength—were dwarfed by the emperor's wrath.
All around us, the drums pounded.
"We need to leave the city," Mother murmured, her voice thin and stretched, barely audible above the din.
"How?" I hissed back. The nearest gate was hours away on foot—if we could even push through the stampede of bodies flooding the streets. By the time we reached it, we'd be dead with the rest.
Mother's gaze dropped to the ground, her sharp focus pulling me with it. I didn't need her to speak; the weight of her silence was enough. I followed her line of sight.
"The ruins…" The name slipped out, unbidden, dredged from the hazy memories of history lessons I'd half-slept through. An ancient city, carved into the bones of the earth by a long-dead dwarven civilization—a thousand years ago, back when they still walked the continent.
The dwarves, master builders and engineers, had ruled with a power unmatched, their cities unrivaled in both grandeur and complexity. Before the Stoneveil Crusade had shattered their hold on the world, the dwarves had ruled the land as humans do now, their influence stretching to every corner of the known world.
Supposedly, Amara was built on top of one of their greatest cities—a sprawling underground labyrinth of unimaginable scale and complexity. Nothing more than a myth, or so I'd thought. An old wives' tale, the kind whispered around firesides to entertain or to scare, depending on the mood.
But if the ruins were real…
Mother's face hardened, her expression fierce and unyielding as if she'd read my thoughts. "They're real," she said, her voice cutting through my doubt like a blade. "And if we're going to survive this, our only chance lies down there."
She turned to me, her gaze blazing with determination. "Follow me."
She tugged me into an alley, ducking between abandoned carts and crates, moving through the shadows as if she'd done this a hundred times. With each step, the chaos grew fainter, the sound of our footsteps blending with the distant, unholy clangor of war machines tearing through the city.
Finally, we reached an old, rusted grate, half-hidden behind a crumbling stone wall. Mother knelt and pried it open, revealing a dark, gaping tunnel leading downward.
"Are you sure this is the way?" I asked, my voice trembling.
She fixed me with a look, her eyes steely. "Since when did you start doubting me?"
And with that, she slipped into the darkness, leaving me no choice but to follow.
Above us, the towers finally powered up, unleashing beams of magic that carved through swaths of the Zahlani legions below. But for every soldier incinerated, more poured out of the tear in the sky—an unending tide of fanatics, all willing to die for the emperor's crusade.
The towers needed time to recharge, their magic crystals draining with each blast. Ten minutes until they'd be ready to fire again. In those precious minutes, the Zahlani mages seized their chance, chanting incantations over the blood-soaked ground. From their dark magic, another rift tore open in the sky, and from it poured fire demons, their flames searing indiscriminately—friend and foe alike consumed in a storm of burning chaos.
The city guards faltered as they watched the Zahlani soldiers embrace the flames, running through the streets like maddened cockroaches, setting everything ablaze before they themselves burned out, shrieking, "Feel the fire of the emperor!"
Meanwhile, in the shadows below, Mother lit a torch, its flickering light casting long, ominous shadows along the tunnel walls.
"Is this…the ruins?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
She glanced back at me, her expression unreadable. "Not yet. We have a long way to go."
I hesitated, watching the torchlight flicker against the stone walls, casting shadows that danced like ghosts. "Have you been down here before?"
"No." Her voice softened, a rare note of reverence coloring her words. "But my grandfather had. He was a level-80 necromancer, nearly powerful enough to transcend into a lich. Before he died, he found these ruins, left behind a map…and a few notes."
I smirked, though the dark pressed down on us. "You can't say I don't come from impressive stock. Necromancers are one in a million—and the few who awaken to that class are usually hunted down early, either by clerics or some sword-waving fool who thinks himself a hero. For him to reach level 80 while living in a city, he must have had control over his mana that bordered on obsessive…and the patience of a saint."
She gave a thin smile. "Or of a snail."
A moment passed before I asked, "So how did he find it, if everyone thinks it's a myth?"
"He had a triple death attribute," she said, a note of pride slipping in. "By level 80, that kind of affinity hones you. Heightens your senses to anything with necrotic essence. He tracked the energy here until he found the source. He wrote in his notes that if he absorbed the power in these ruins, he'd have become a lich." Her voice lowered, a flicker of sorrow there. "But he died before he could fulfill that ambition."
I stopped in my tracks, a chill creeping through me. "Won't that necrotic energy poison us, then? Without a cleric or a cleansing potion, it's a death sentence."
She gave me a look, her hand resting on the heavy pack I'd been carrying. "Which is why you're lugging around a month's supply of cleansing potions. And rations. I'd been saving up to explore these ruins with you, after your awakening." She paused, casting a last glance at the fading torchlight above. "That timeline just…sped up a little."
Mother always said, If you're always prepared, you never have to prepare. Today, I began to understand just how true that was.
As we pressed deeper into the dark, a question that had been gnawing at me finally surfaced. "You don't talk much about your side of the family. Why?" I tried to keep my voice casual, but the truth was, her past had been a shadow in my mind for as long as I could remember. All I knew was that she'd been born in Amara and, like countless others, had turned to dungeon adventuring the moment she awakened, chasing the promise of wealth.
Her gaze flicked forward, avoiding mine. "It's… a family secret. It's not that I don't want to tell you." Her voice trailed off, her words dissipating into an unnerving silence. Suddenly, everything went quiet—the echo of our footsteps, the crackle of the torch. I saw her lips move, but no sound came out. Then, as if piercing through water, her voice returned. "You just can't hear the secret yet."
I frowned, unsettled. "Why couldn't I hear you?"
She glanced at me, her expression unreadable. "A bloodline seal. The secrets of our family can't be spoken to anyone not of our bloodline…or to those who haven't awakened."
My chest tightened with the realization. "So I have to awaken my class first. That's why Father never knew, isn't it?"
She nodded, a hint of resignation in her eyes. "How could he? I'm not at a level high enough to bypass the seal." She shrugged, but the weight of that shrug spoke volumes.
We walked for what felt like hours, each step heavier than the last. Even with all the drills and endurance training Mother had forced on me, the strain seeped into my muscles, burrowing into my bones. My legs ached with each step, the ground uneven and unforgiving beneath our feet. Down here, the air felt stale, cold, as if it had been locked away for centuries, thickening until every breath felt like inhaling the tunnel's suffocating weight.
Mother glanced back, catching my labored breathing with a raised brow, her lips twisting into a faint, mocking smile. "You tired already?"
I clenched my jaw, the sharp bite of her words stoking a flicker of defiance. "No," I shot back, the lie laced with a flash of pride.
She chuckled, the sound as unforgiving as her gaze. "Good. Then keep up."
I swallowed back the ache in my legs, forcing my pace to match hers. Foolish, maybe, thinking I could keep up with an Awakened. Her stamina was leagues beyond mine; I knew that. But pride, stubborn as ever, drove me forward, heart pounding in fierce rhythm. Every step was an unspoken vow—I'd keep up, whatever it took.
She was silent for a moment, her face unreadable.
"This map" I said "the one great grandfather drew did it highlights an exit?"
She was silent for a moment, her face unreadable. "No. He never had the chance to explore these ruins in depth."
I glanced around at the shadowed corridors stretching ahead. "And you think we'll find an exit before the cleansing potion wears off?"
"We don't need to find one," she replied, her voice level. "We just have to stay hidden here long enough for the army to pass. Then, we return to the surface and slip out of the kingdom."
"How long do you think that will take?"
She tilted her head, eyes narrowing in thought. "Nine days at the very least."
"Nine days?" My voice caught, the implications slamming into me like a fist. "You think they'll have conquered the city and moved on in nine days?"
"No," she said quietly, almost detached. "The city will fall by dawn. By then, any survivors will be rounded up—enslaved, executed, or, if they're lucky, subjugated." She paused, her gaze hardening. "But in nine days, the chaos might settle, and we'll have a chance to escape another way."
I swallowed, the weight of her words pressing down. Nine days in the dark, with only the unknown waiting.
"This mark…" mother pointed the torch at a triangle with three eyes in it "grandfather left it here. We're nearly there"
The tunnel opened into a vast cavern, its ceiling lost in shadows, so high above it seemed to touch the heavens. Colossal stone pillars stretched upward, their surfaces carved with intricate, spiraling patterns that mimicked insect wings and legs. Along the center path, statues of insects stood in silent formation—beetles, mantises, spiders, each figure rendered with painstaking detail, as if a single command could bring them to life.
At the far end of the cavern, a massive stone door loomed, flanked by ornate carvings of insects in flight, frozen in majestic battle stances, antennae pointed skyward and wings unfurled. The door itself bore a grand depiction of an ancient insect queen, her many eyes carved from dark gemstones that glinted in the torchlight, watching us with a hollow, unblinking gaze.
Mother took a step forward, her voice low with awe. "These dwarves… to think they immortalized insects in stone. I thought such homage was reserved for heroes and their gods."
"Perhaps the insects are their gods," I quipped, trying to lighten the suffocating air, but it only echoed back hollowly off the stone walls.
We approached each statue, marveling at the craftsmanship. Even the finest hairs on the insects' legs and the delicate veining in their wings had been meticulously carved, capturing a haunting realism. These dwarven stonemasons had hands blessed by gods, their work timeless and unnervingly lifelike.
Finally, we stood before the massive stone door, the dark gemstones in the insect queen's many eyes glinting with a strange, watchful energy. Mother reached out, fingers brushing the intricate carvings. "Let's hope they left an entrance worthy of the art," she murmured.
With a slight push, the door groaned, shifting open inch by inch, as if reluctant to yield its secrets. From the widening gap, a necrotic essence seeped out, curling through the air like a dark mist. It brushed against my skin, cold and unnatural, and a chill raced down my spine.
"Only take the cleansing potion when you feel your organs start to fail," Mother instructed, her voice firm. "We have enough for a month, but who knows how long we'll be down here. Better to ration it now than regret it later."
I forced a nod, swallowing back the unease that gnawed at me. "Nine days, I hope," I replied, trying to inject a note of optimism, though it came out thin.
She glanced at me with a wry smile, a shadow of doubt in her eyes as she continued to press against the door. It creaked open wider, exhaling more of that ancient, tainted air that seemed to carry whispers of the ruin we were stepping into.
Finally, with a last shuddering groan, the door opened fully.