Ethan hit the stone floor hard, the impact echoing mercilessly off the walls of the dark chamber.
His breath caught for a moment, his lungs feeling as though they'd been knocked completely out of place. He groaned, trying to push himself up on trembling arms, and the first thing he became aware of was the silence. Not the silence of the forest he'd just left, but something heavier—the kind of quiet that only existed in a room untouched by human hands for a very long time.
Kael landed a few meters away, far more practiced at absorbing impacts. He rolled once before rising to his feet, knees slightly bent.
"Get up," he said quickly, extending a hand toward Ethan, his eyes still warily scanning the darkness around them. "We're not alone here."
Ethan grasped his hand and let himself be pulled upright. His eyes began adjusting to the dim light around them. They stood in a massive hall, its ceiling soaring high above them, covered in half-collapsed carvings. Stone pillars lined both sides of the room like the ribs of some decaying giant. At the far end of the hall stood an empty throne atop a tiered platform, surrounded by statues of soldiers whose faces had long since been worn away by time.
[Location Detected: Main Hall, Ruins of Aldmere] [Warning: Host Synchronization Stable at 44 percent. Fluctuation Temporarily Halted.]
The sound of clanking metal echoed from a distance, coming from the direction of the entrance they'd unwittingly passed through. The Hollow Guardian—or something resembling it—had already followed them inside.
"This way," Kael whispered, pulling Ethan's arm and guiding him behind one of the massive pillars.
They hid just as a figure in empty armor stepped into the hall. It was smaller than the Guardian they'd encountered at the cliff, but far more agile, its head swiveling quickly left and right as though searching for something that had just slipped from its sight.
Ethan held his breath. His heart pounded so hard he was certain its sound could be heard clear across the hall.
The figure stopped in the exact center of the room, its head tilting toward the empty throne. Cracks of light along its body flickered slowly, as though it were communicating with something unseen.
Kael seized the moment. He signaled for Ethan to stay silent, then picked up a small stone from the floor and hurled it into a far corner of the hall.
The sound of the stone striking echoed through the hall, and the armored figure spun toward the noise at once, stepping quickly away from the pillar where they were hiding. Its faceless head bowed as it examined that corner of the room, its metal hand raised in alert, its fingers sparking with tiny flickers of purple light like embers ready to burst at any moment.
"Now," Kael whispered, pulling Ethan in the opposite direction and skirting the edge of the hall toward a dark corridor on the other side.
They ran, their footsteps muffled by the thick dust covering the stone floor. The corridor narrowed further, its walls covered in reliefs depicting robed figures surrounding something radiant, but Ethan had no time to study them.
At the end of the corridor, a massive iron door blocked their path, sealed shut by a rusted chain wound around its handle.
"This is a dead end," Ethan whispered in panic, glancing back as he heard the clanking of metal drawing near again from the direction of the hall.
Kael didn't answer. He placed his palm against the surface of the iron door and closed his eyes for a moment. Faint symbols began glowing around the door's handle, following the same pattern as the emblem on the chest of the robed man who had attacked them earlier.
The rusted chain cracked, then crumbled into fragments, and the iron door swung open with a long groan that echoed throughout the corridor.
"That's not good," Kael muttered, dragging Ethan inside and shutting the door behind them as fast as he could.
Beyond the door, the clanking that had sounded distant moments ago turned into rapid, furious pounding, as though the sound of the opening door had just announced their location to the entire ruin.
The chamber beyond the door was far smaller, filled with stone shelves holding ancient scrolls. At its center stood an altar with a dark crystal surface that pulsed slowly, like a still-beating heart.
[Warning: Anomaly Detected. Source of Aldmere's Energy Located in This Chamber.]
Ethan approached the altar, drawn by something he couldn't explain, as though pulled by an irresistible magnet. His legs moved on their own, without any command from his mind. Kael tried to hold him back, but it was too late—Ethan's fingers had already touched the dark crystal surface.
White light burst from the altar, flooding the entire chamber. For a fraction of a second, Ethan could see the shadowy outlines of figures standing around him—not human, nor creatures like the Hollow Guardian, but something resembling both at once. They watched him with empty eyes that suddenly ignited all at the same moment. The shadowy figures raised their hands in unison, as though welcoming his arrival, and their unreal lips moved, silently repeating the same single word over and over.
Kael yanked Ethan's arm with all his strength, trying to tear his hand from the crystal's surface, but the light had already locked around Ethan's wrist like a bracelet, hardening instantly.
The iron door behind them exploded into shards of metal.
The larger Hollow Guardian—the one that had chased them at the cliff—stepped through the wreckage of the shattered door, its body now wreathed in a purple aura far brighter than before, as though it had just absorbed something that had made it far more powerful. Its footsteps shattered the stone floor beneath it, leaving a trail of spreading cracks with every movement.
"Young master," the voice echoed, closer and clearer this time, "this altar is not for you."
The dark crystal beneath Ethan's hand suddenly cracked, and from that crack poured light far brighter still, blinding anyone who dared look directly at it.
[Critical Warning: Final Seal of Aldmere Has Been Touched. Awakening Has Begun. Estimated Time: Imminent.]