Chapter 1 – The Forgotten Door
The sky was the color of ash.
Kael trudged along the edge of the broken ridge, his boots crunching against gravel that had once been part of some ancient road. The wind carried a dry, hollow sound, as though the land itself whispered of things long dead.
The settlement was far behind him now, a scattering of huts built from scavenged scrap, clinging to life like weeds in the cracks of a corpse. No one sane strayed this far. The elders had always warned: Ruins bring nothing but death.
And yet… his curiosity had teeth.
Kael's eyes caught it first as a sliver of stone jutting out from the hillside. At a glance it could have been mistaken for a natural outcropping, but as he stepped closer, the pattern revealed itself—blocks too perfectly cut, etched with grooves eroded by time.
A door.
Half-buried, half-swallowed by the earth, but unmistakably man-made.
Kael's breath quickened despite the weight in his chest. He knew the stories. Those who entered ruins rarely returned, and those who did came back… wrong. But staring at the forgotten door, something inside him twisted. Fear, yes. But also wonder.
If the world before us built this… what else did they leave behind?
He crouched, running his fingers across the stone. Cold. Rough. His hand snagged against a shallow groove—a line curving inwards, spiraling toward the center. The spiral ended where the door met the soil, as though pointing downward.
The ground trembled.
Kael yanked his hand back, heart hammering. He waited for the rumble to stop, scanning the ridge. No landslide. No quake. Just silence, heavier than before.
And then, faintly, something new appeared before his eyes.
Not in the world. Not carved into stone. But inside his vision, like a half-formed echo:
[ … ]
[ Fragment Detected ]
The words flickered and broke apart, like smoke dissolving in wind.
Kael stumbled back. He rubbed his eyes until spots danced across his vision. Nothing. Only the dead hillside and the buried door remained.
"…I've gone mad," he whispered.
But the words had been there.
The wind shifted, carrying with it a faint hum—a resonance that crawled against his skin. The spiral grooves on the door seemed to shimmer in the corner of his sight. He blinked, but they were still dull stone.
Kael's instincts screamed at him to turn back. To return to the safety of firelight, to forget he ever found this place. But his legs refused. Instead, he pressed his palm against the stone once more.
The hum grew louder.
Stone ground against stone, and the spiral split open.
Dust billowed as an ancient seam cracked apart, revealing a thin passage descending into darkness. The smell of stale air, damp and metallic, rushed out.
Kael's throat went dry. He glanced at the sky—already dim, the ash-colored sun sinking lower. If he delayed, night would claim him here.
Just a glance, he told himself. I'll look, then leave.
The descent was narrow, carved into the earth at a slope. Walls pressed close, rough with strange markings he couldn't read. Some lines glowed faintly, then dimmed as if hiding from his gaze.
The further he went, the louder the hum became. Not in his ears, but in his bones.
At last the passage opened into a chamber.
Kael stopped at the threshold, breath shallow. The space was vast, impossibly so, its ceiling vanishing into shadow. Shards of broken metal and stone littered the floor. In the center, raised on a cracked pedestal, lay an object.
A shard of glass? No—too thick, too heavy. It pulsed faintly, like a heart of fractured light.
[ Fragment Core Detected ]
[ Integration Possible ]
The broken words cut across his vision again, sharper now. Kael's knees weakened. He clutched the wall, whispering hoarsely:
"…What are you?"
No answer. Only silence, broken by the slow beat of the shard's glow.
He stepped closer. Each footfall echoed unnaturally, like walking inside a dream. His reflection bent across the shard's fractured surface—his own face split into dozens of warped pieces.
His hand rose. He didn't want it to. His body moved on hunger, on instinct, on something that wasn't entirely his.
The moment his fingertips brushed the shard, a surge ripped through him.
Pain.
A scream tore from his throat, though he wasn't sure if it was his or something else's. Light carved through his veins, searing fire and ice. His vision splintered—walls shifting, shadows stretching into skeletal forms that whispered without tongues.
The shard dissolved into his skin, leaving nothing.
And then, a jagged screen of words forced itself into his mind:
[ Fragmented System Activated ]
[ Warning: Incomplete… Error… Error… ]
Kael collapsed to his knees, gasping. The world tilted, his head ringing with a thousand broken echoes. He clawed at his chest, expecting to find a wound, but there was nothing.
The pedestal stood empty. The shard was gone.
Only the broken system remained.
"…What have I done?"
His voice was swallowed by the dark.
The hum quieted, replaced by faint whispers from the walls. Shadows leaned closer, watching. Kael's instincts screamed that he had trespassed, that something ancient had just awoken within him—and it would never let go.