Tom pushed himself up after a while, muscles still aching, breath ragged but steadier now.
The cathedral was quiet now, only the faint crackle of broken glass under his boots echoed. The fight had drained him, but curiosity pulled him forward.
The walls, once hidden in the gloom, came alive under thin streaks of filtered light. Strange hieroglyphs sprawled across the stone, the figures of lions with wings, suns split in half, chains wrapping around celestial bodies. Tom stepped closer, fingertips brushing against the grooves.
He frowned. "So that thing… wasn't even at full strength?"
The carvings told the story clearer than words. A lion deity with three heads, wings like razors was chained down by something unseen, bound in invisible shackles that pressed its body flat against the ground.
Tom tilted his head, piecing it together. "Not killed, caged. Whoever locked it here… was on a different level altogether."
A thought crept in, making his chest tighten. If those chains hadn't been there—if the beast had been free, unrestrained then it wouldn't have been a fight, but an execution. He'd have been flattened before he even raised his weapon. "Speed-blitzed," he muttered bitterly, cracking a dry smile. "Not even enough time to realize. ."
He stared at the spot where the lion had faded, the air still carrying the faint, acrid scent of blood and divinity. A "nerd version," he thought, almost laughing at the absurdity.
A cosmic god, bound and weakened, downgraded into something he could barely manage to kill.
Then the System chimed again, soft but undeniable.
Tom stared at it, lips together. "First time…" he whispered. It was the first time he had ever earned EXP. Real, hard-earned points for fighting. Not scavenging scraps. Not learning second-hand. But killing something that should have killed him.
He took Yari in his slot. This wasn't just survival anymore. There was something that was chasing him.
Tom pushed himself up with a grunt, still breathing like a broken bellows. His legs felt heavy, but he forced them forward, dragging his boots across the marble floor of the cathedral.
The air here was colder than before, and every step recalled in the hollow vastness.
The Yari was already tucked safely in his slot. He wasn't about to make the same mistake twice.
As he moved deeper, his eyes caught faint etchings on the walls. The scratched lines and figures, carved in patterns he didn't recognize. He stopped. The torchlight from the cracks above made the marks shimmer faintly, almost like they were alive.
Tom stepped closer, raising a hand to trace one with his fingers. They weren't random. They were ordered, layered, stacked like a story being told without words. Strange beasts.
Chains wrapped around them. People kneeling. A great lion with wings spread wide of a three heads staring outward, jaws open.
He exhaled slowly. "So… you were locked up here."
His mind filled the silence with guesses. Maybe invisible chains had been binding it all along, strangling its strength, burying most of what it could really do.
That meant.... what he fought wasn't the deity itself. Just a nerfed version. A "nerd," as his brain mocked, still capable of tearing him apart, but nowhere close to its true force.
Tom rubbed the back of his neck. "If it wasn't bound… I wouldn't even have seen it move. Just—poof, lights out."
The thought made his stomach tighten. He'd survived out of luck, out of circumstance, not out of true ability. That reality sat heavy in his chest.
Yet he had survived. This time, the System had given him 1k EXP. He'd felt what fighting for his life really meant.
He stood there longer than he expected, staring at the hieroglyphics, as if waiting for the stone lions to blink.
Tom's footsteps resounded, swallowed by the vast stone belly of the cathedral. The mirrors around him glimmered faintly, like they were catching light from somewhere that shouldn't exist.
He kept walking, hand brushing the walls. The carvings thickened here, whole panels crowded with figures and spirals.
He slowed down. "Another lore?" he muttered under his breath. His eyes followed the sharp grooves in the stone. "Like the Endless Black Ocean…"
The thought stuck with him.
Aboveground, Carna Forest had already felt wrong. Those plants with teeth, air too heavy, paths that led into mouths. What if it wasn't just danger? What if it was a story? A chapter of the world's history layered right on the land, disguised as nature?
He tapped a finger against the wall. The carvings didn't answer, but they almost looked smug.
The hieroglyphs stretched higher now, forming a strange mural. A spiral sun, half-black, half-white, with rivers pouring out of it. At its edges, shapes of beasts. Things with more heads than limbs, things with too many eyes.
Below them, smaller figures. Human-like. Kneeling.
Tom stepped back to take it all in. "This cathedral… tribe, civilization, cult?" His voice felt too thin in the heavy air.
The air itself was cold but sticky, like a whisper pressing against his skin. He thought of Elior suddenly.
The way he talked about Faces, about mysteries you weren't supposed to touch but always ended up walking into anyway.
Tom's jaw tightened. "Maybe he would've read this in a second."
Another panel pulled his attention. This one showed chains which were massive, cosmic, drawn like rivers of iron. They wrapped around a beast, wings flared, bodies kneeling below it.
The Lion... again...
Tom's chest tightened.
The thing he fought wasn't just an accident lurking underground. It was part of this. Maybe it had been worshiped or it had been punished. Or both?
He rubbed his temples, trying to follow the carvings. The chain continued, splitting into nine directions. Each one ended in a different symbol: a flame, a spiral, a crown, an eye. Some he couldn't even recognize.
His head started to ache.
"Am I even supposed to understand this?" He laughed weakly, though the sound cracked in the empty cathedral.
More steps forward. More mirrors lining the hall, their surfaces blurry, as if something on the other side leaned too close. He avoided looking for long.
Another wall showed a tree, its branches made of knives, its roots stabbing into little human figures beneath.
Yet the humans weren't shown bleeding but they were bowing.
Tom squinted at it. "Peace… or surrender?" He didn't know which.
The silence pressed harder the deeper he went.
His mind circled again. What if the forest above was also a record? A "lore zone." The Endless Black Ocean. Carna Forest.
The cathedral. All connected somehow. Layers of history disguised as geography.
The idea both thrilled him and made his skin crawl.
"Am I walking through ruins… or into a story someone left behind?"
He kept walking. The mirrors glimmered. His reflection felt delayed, like it was waiting for him to slip up.
The hieroglyphs ended at a massive door at the far end of the hall. Its surface wasn't stone. It was mirror.
Perfectly smooth and still.
Tom stopped in front of it, heartbeat hit loud in his ears.
He realized he wasn't sure if the cathedral was a building at all.
A cage,
or a book,
or a temple?
Then,
Tom stepped out of the cathedral, blinking as daylight filtered back through the cracks in the trees. The air was warmer here, heavy with that sour green smell of Carna Forest.
He walked a little farther until the stone turned back into dirt and roots. His shoulders ached. His lungs felt like they'd carried a mountain on the way out.
He dropped onto a patch of grass and leaned against a crooked trunk. The bark pressed cold through his coat.
"Rest," he muttered, almost ordering himself.
Foe. His head tilted back and his eyes traced the canopy, that endless tangle of branches where every shadow looked like it had teeth.
To distract himself, he started thinking of nonsense.
What if the birds here secretly wrote poetry at night? What if the trees argued over who had the best leaves? He pictured them with voices. One deep and booming, another nasal and sharp bickering about sunlight rights.
A chuckle slipped out. It felt wrong, but also needed.
Then his mind spun further. If the lion was a deity, then maybe there were others. What if the next one wasn't a beast at all but something ridiculous like a god of chairs, hunting anyone who dared sit too long.
He imagined Vera being chased by an army of four wooden legs and nearly laughed again.
The humor thinned quickly. His ribs still hurt from dodging, his palms sore from gripping weapons too long. The exhaustion leaked through his bones in waves.
Tom closed his eyes for a second. The forest breathed with him. Every creak and sway of branch sounded like words.
He thought about the hieroglyphs again, those spirals and chains. His jaw tightened. A cage, a book, or a temple—he still couldn't decide.
"Stop," he whispered to himself. "Rest first."
The grass itched his arms. His hat tilted low, shutting out some of the light. He wanted, just for a moment, to believe the world was quiet.
From somewhere deeper in the forest, faint at first, then clearer,
A scratching sound.
It moved once. Paused.
Moved again.
Tom's eyes opened. He sat up straight. The forest didn't want to argue, it wanted entertainment.