Chapter 52
Various indistinct silhouettes began to appear one after another as the haze lifted from Hoku's vision.
Though none of them appeared to be closely surrounding him.
Hoku swallowed, pressing both hands over his temples, and after recovering a bit of his senses, he stood in haste.
He steeled his features, resolutely suppressing the urge to immediately panic, before lowering his hand back to his side.
Hoku had long since learned the consequences of acting without first gauging his surroundings; The few times he had called out hastily, the response had never been merciful.
He inwardly acknowledged that merely waiting around, however, would just consume time.
After a moment of attempting to devise a plan, Hoku leisurely dragged a foot back and forth on the ground.
The soft rasp beneath his sole suggested a thin layer of dust, or perhaps traces of soil.
'This…polished stone? Where am I…?'
A second later, he brought his sole down against the ground.
Thud…
A dull noise resounded before vanishing into the distance.
He swiftly surmised, 'I'm in an enclosed space this time…'
Hoku's heart thumped faster for a moment, but the second revelation that followed eased him in turn.
If there had been a way in, then surely there would also be a way out.
He took a few strides forward, gradually forming a vague impression of the true scope of the place.
Remarkably, he found that he could still form subtle impressions; the place was aged and desolate, likely ruins or an abandoned hall, perhaps even a temple once devoted to worship.
The droplets of water that still dripped from his clothes caught glints of bronze and gold before fading, like tarnished leaves sinking through black water.
It was only natural that a place so vast and shrouded in darkness would lack warmth.
Yet the dampness of his clothes made the cold all the more unbearable.
When his teeth began to chatter, Hoku lowered his head and took off the soaked vest.
The fabric had spared his undershirt only enough to leave it damp and heavy.
"So much for changing clothes," he muttered under his breath.
Hoku kept a habit of dressing in layers, as though doing so could keep his worry in unfamiliar surroundings at a distance.
Now, with the cold passing through regardless, he felt little difference.
Hoku rolled his sleeves higher and painfully flexed his fingers.
His only means of protection was the elixir in his pocket; even so, it was something he still barely understood how to use.
'And if Mars and Li are elsewhere within the same structure, they would have made themselves known, as they understand their elixirs far better than I do.'
After a moment's thought, Hoku sharpened his senses and began listening intently.
Amid the ambient noises, he detected a distant rumble emanating from within the area.
The rise and fall of its rhythm stirred motes of dust.
Since he could not see it, he could not help but doubt his own perception.
'Am I imagining it?'
Despite his skepticism, Hoku moved cautiously toward the sound, intent on confirming what he'd heard.
Before he had taken ten strides, the tip of his boot knocked into something.
Thud!
For a moment, his knees gave way—
And an instant later, a violent gale swept past, tipping him slightly and rattling his jaw. He pressed a hand to his chest, restraining the reflex to gasp.
Once it passed, he noticed the faint current for the first time.
Acknowledging that the sudden gale could not be wholly ignored, Hoku set it aside for the moment, choosing instead to attend to what had just revealed itself.
Without meaning to, his head drooped slightly, and his eyelids lowered as though conceding to exhaustion.
After a moment, his limbs twitched. Hoku's instincts began to stir ahead of his doubt, prompting subtle, hesitant gestures as he recovered his sense of control.
As everything settled, a calm voice emerged in his mind, one that had faintly surfaced before in his conscience during the stomach dream.
Just as before, it seemed to urge him to trust his sense of direction…
even when it seemed meaningless.
That brief counsel did nothing to dispel his doubts.
It merely traced a thin thread through them, one he could follow to keep from straying too far.
Having come across it for the second time, though, he assumed it must've carried greater significance than he had consciously noticed when Mars had spoken.
'Maybe the only way to face the unknown is to let it accompany you,' he silently hummed in thought.
"Not to oppose it out of fear, nor to pursue it with blind faith, but to walk both prepared and unexpectant. Those who persisted through the Sequences couldn't have done so because they were sure of the path ahead… They learned to accept uncertainty, and continued…'
Accepting this conclusion, for better or worse, Hoku exhaled inwardly and let the furrows of his brow ease. "This is what I should have done from the beginning," he murmured.
Though naturally, I'm late.'
Hoku's eyes opened again, and the vague outlines before him began to regain their form; the shadows, once dull and formless, drew sharper along their edges. "Is this place truly as empty as I—" He cut himself short.
It was still too early to speak that thought aloud.
'Better to cross things off after I've gathered more insight,' he mused instead.
Upon raising his gaze, a faint light shimmered far ahead.
Though it could scarcely be seen, it proved that a lack of certainty had grounds to remain.
His lips pressed into a line.
'I'll just need to make sure that I remain close to where that thread still holds.'
Whatever wind had passed through here had touched little else.
He could only hope that nothing living had moved with it.
Hoku moved his weight back and extended his left hand.
Almost immediately, his fingers encountered the same unseen resistance.
As he followed it carefully, he felt the outer plaster crumble, flaking away to expose a more concentrated surface beneath.
It was smooth in a few parts, but uneven in others, cold to the touch, and lightly chalked from age.
As his fingers moved across the wall, Hoku's thumb grazed a narrow seam, its outline weathered and chipped by the long erosion of time.
When he pressed his palm flat against it, he sensed the slight depression where two stones met.
'A brick wall?' The notion crossed his mind, yet he dismissed it at once upon making a more deliberate comparison. 'I'm almost fully certain it's plaster, I think I've come across enough of it in Jiang Hao's home.'
Leaning in, Hoku followed the seam down to where it disappeared below the wall's base. "The crack doesn't branch… so why—" he whispered, as he inspected even lower.
A steady thread of air brushed against his fingertips. His eyes widened slightly.
'So I wasn't imagining it after all!'
He kept his hand there, the flow of air slipping through as he fell silent in thought.
'It must lead somewhere. Outward, if there's a breach; inward, if there's depth. Which means… there's an open space beyond the wall. And the reason I can feel the current from only this spot is because the passage in the wall wasn't cut deep enough.'
For now, this theory was just one possibility among many.
Thus, Hoku contemplated for even longer.
Though the plaster reminded him of the walls he often touched in his uncle's home, his thoughts could not help but wander to the unexplainably odd structure of the house itself.
On the outside, it appeared modest, yet the interior was spacious and almost double the size one would expect.
Much of this arose from how some rooms concealed secret passages and narrow ventilation shafts, particularly within the library.
Hoku never truly grew bored of that room. At times, he regarded it as an enormous jigsaw puzzle, for even casual observation revealed the most unusual spaces, evidently intended to be hidden.
On leisure nights, he would roam them by candlelight, using one of Jiang Hao's ornate candlesticks.
He had noticed how the tiny flame quivered when brought near the higher shelves.
That was how he had discerned the presence of ventilation channels.
Slowly, an idea stirred tentatively within him.
Without hesitation, Hoku reached into his pocket and drew out the Compass.
He turned the dial to the left, pressed it down, and flipped open the metal cover.
A bright, white flame blossomed quietly with an urgent whoosh! Expanding swiftly around the deck of cards.
Its edges shimmered with the same unnatural, opalescent gleam.
As it swelled, a keen tingling coursed through his palm, and the light spilled outward, contorting the surroundings into skewed shapes.
Hoku instinctively lifted his arm.
Hoku lifted his arm without thinking.
This was indeed ruin, though not in the way he had anticipated.
The flame revealed little, yet its strange coloration made it burn brighter than any ordinary fire.
It unveiled a vast hall branching into three directions—or at least three that he could discern—the arches extended on both sides into darkness.
On the ground near him were various broken planks and the remains of what seemed to be a massive shelving structure, lying scattered far across the floor like broken ribs.
Dust drifted lazily through the air, catching the light in brief glimmers before dissolving away.
Beyond that, the silhouettes of toppled furniture and distant frames merged into obscurity.
The ceiling was invisible, swallowed by the height above.
After a brief pause, Hoku turned in the one direction he had yet to examine and slowly raised his hand.
His eyes widened upon a circular window high above, its panes completely boarded from the outside.
He slowly inhaled a gasp.
This wasn't a mere empty chamber, but a grand hall with adjoining passages; a library built like a cathedral, strewn with loose pages, overturned covers, and spilled ink.
But even amidst this clutter, Hoku felt the place utterly empty.
Naturally, that meant he would have to find his own way out, no matter where it led.
The thought made him somewhat uneasy, and he wasn't sure how long the flame would last.
He lowered his hand slightly.
"Then I should use it for what I most need to understand," he murmured.
At first, the flame's motion was steady, its wavering only the result of heat meeting air. Yet as he swept it across the floor, letting it pass over a thin crack in the surface, the light bent downward—faintly, but unmistakably.
Hoku instinctively held his breath.
At first, the flame burned steadily, its slight wavering merely the product of heat meeting air.
However, as he moved it slowly across the floor, letting it hover over a thin crack on the surface, the light bent downward.
In a sealed space, the air should have been still. For it to move as though seeking escape…
That implied pressure.
That movement hadn't come from his hand, nor from any passing draft.
He leaned back with guarded deliberation, his thoughts already moving ahead of his gaze.
"There must be space below the floor," he thoughtfully murmured, "a crevice wide enough for the air to move around within it… maybe something beyond a small pocket of space."
Beneath, where there should have been only packed soil and foundation, a subtle irregularity caught his eye.
He hesitated, deeply puzzled, and rose just enough to expand his peripheral vision.
It was only when he moved his gaze along the adjacent wall that he noticed it entirely.
What had seemed a solitary, unremarkable line revealed itself instead as a mesh of delicate grooves.
They ran nearly parallel, splitting unevenly as they descended and tapered in unpredictable patterns.
When he moved the flame aside, its flickering light illuminated additional long, shallow furrows across both the lower wall and the floor.
He adjusted his stance, leaning forward to study them with renewed attention.
As these disparate scratches settled into a coherent image in Hoku's mind, he realized what they resembled.
His complexion changed, and his throat became dry.
They were immense, yet unnervingly slender claw marks.
To be continued…
-◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼◼◼ -
Unlisted Grades 2/49 —
Category: Abundants
Mnueme- One who can assimilate memories or realities from another universe, but only with the Sequel's permission. Such an existence also carries the possibility of reverting to a previous form from a different timeline or dimension.
- ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼ ◼◼◼ -