The stairwell spiraled into low violet light. A pressure hung in the air, neither warm nor cold. It was the kind of weight that settled behind the eyes, like someone watching too closely for too long.
Marth stepped into the hall.
Blue torchlights shimmered across metal and stone. The air smelled of scorched bone and stagnant mana. Rows of tables filled the chamber, each one holding a failure.
Some bodies still had recognizable shapes. Others had been twisted by arcane backlash—flesh and metal melted together, chests torn open, heads etched with runes that had collapsed mid-carving. More than a few glowed faintly from unstable enchantments still running in loops.
He glanced at the wall's edge where thin glass panels embedded in the stone flickered to life as he passed. Archive crystals.
"Attempt 1412: Rejection. Slot destabilized during anchor phase."
"Attempt 1413: Recursive failure. Vessel designated cursed."
He stopped beside one of the slabs. The subject's chest had been opened and hollowed out. Instead of a heart, a shard of obsidian sat wedged in a containment cradle—its rune spiral broken halfway through.
The carving hadn't taken. The vessel had rejected the Slot.
Marth tilted his head.
'So they tried to install Arkanum Slots like clockwork gears.'
Even now, the pattern was familiar. A shallow mimicry of a process none of them truly understood.
He moved further down the archive.
Some of the embers locked in crystal vaults looked intact at first glance. But their color was wrong—grey and dull. Like coal that had been burned long ago.
One of them sat behind a thick viewing glass. Runes hovered over it in a diagnostic projection.
"Crystallization incomplete. Concept failed to bind. Embryonic structure degraded."
Marth leaned slightly forward.
'Close. But no anchor. No will to stabilize the form.'
He moved on, boots brushing dust and ash as he passed each failed shell. At one point, a projection flared when he approached—an echo of an experiment. A robed figure chanted, attempted a forced carve, then detonated in a blink of white-blue fire.
He watched the playback until it faded.
Then shrugged slightly.
'At least they were committed.'
Toward the back of the archive, the air grew heavier. Glyphs flickered along the walls in a slow rhythm, like breathing. The last hallway ended at a sealed door—its surface stitched with moving metal veins, thin as thread. The glyph above it wasn't a barrier.
It was a question.
A conceptual lock. One that didn't open with force, spells, or passwords. It responded to something else.
Marth didn't reach for it yet.
Instead, he took a seat on a low stone platform near the wall. He folded his arms and stared at nothing.
His eyes drifted back toward the failed vessels. Bodies torn apart in the hope of mimicking something carved into him centuries ago.
He didn't feel pride. He didn't feel disgust. Just a kind of quiet amusement.
'The ones who made this ruin weren't trying to protect power. They were trying to reproduce it. Factory-line miracles. But it doesn't work like that.'
Marth's fingers twitched once at his side. Deep within, past his blood and circuits, past the flesh and bone—two forces pulsed faintly.
Two Origin Spells, sealed within his Arkanum Slots.
The first was Event Horizon, a spell he had crafted himself. A pull toward collapse, built on the concept of inevitable end. Magic, thought, matter—everything drawn inward and erased from interaction.
The second... remained unnamed. A spell he had found, not made. A spell that belonged to something ancient and dead.
Both remained dormant for now.
His body couldn't withstand even a fragment of their power. Not yet.
He stood.
The sealed door pulsed once in response to his presence. The question glyph brightened.
A conceptual test. It sought recognition. Not of identity, but of resonance. It searched for echoes of understanding.
Marth stepped forward. He didn't hesitate, didn't pause to prepare an answer. He placed his hand on the surface and let the Slot in his soul pulse once.
The glyph accepted him.
The door slid open with a whisper.
Behind it was a circular room, almost completely dark. Only a single beam of light fell from above, shining on a pedestal surrounded by scattered memory shards.
It was a chamber of record.
Floating around the pedestal were fragments—burned glyphs, half-finished diagrams, fragments of conceptual arrays. all held in stasis by spatial suspension fields.
On the pedestal rested a glass case.
Inside it floated a cracked Arkanum Slot.
Not one made in a soul—but one etched into something artificial. A replica.
Marth approached slowly, steps light, almost silent.
'Someone tried to transfer a Slot from a soul into a vessel.'
His expression didn't change. But something in him stirred. Not excitement. A kind of weight pressing on the edges of thought.
'They tried to extract Origin magic... like mining ore. And they failed, obviously.'
He circled the pedestal once.
The glyphs flickered in time with his movement. Memory shards floated toward him, revealing bits of context.
"Attempt to externalize Slot integrity failed. Soul collapse imminent."
"Subject X-42 reached 83% stabilization. Internal will collapsed under conceptual weight."
"No entity survived imprint failure above Tier 12."
He studied one final shard, embedded in the floor at the far end.
"Pattern anomaly observed. A single case retained two full Arkanum imprints without collapse. Subject unknown. Tracking failed."
Marth paused, just briefly.
He said nothing.
But his thoughts sharpened to a point.
'So you saw it. You just didn't know what it meant.'
A flicker of satisfaction passed through him, then vanished.
He stepped back from the pedestal.
Whatever this place had once been—a lab, a memorial, a warning—it no longer had answers. Only residue.
Still, something had changed.
He could feel it—not from the ruin itself, but from the Slot within him. The resonance had deepened. Slightly. As if proximity to the echo of failure had nourished what had once succeeded.
He turned toward the exit.
The next path lay deeper below.