The ruins always sounded different to Kael.
Most people heard wind.
Or silence.
Or the creaking of ancient stone.
But Kael heard something else.
Memory.
Ashfall Ruins lay scattered across the frontier like the bones of a forgotten city.
Collapsed towers.
Broken halls.
Endless corridors filled with dust and silence.
Most scavengers came here hoping to find relics.
Old coins.
Ancient tools.
Fragments of Echo artifacts.
But Kael listened to something deeper.
The ruins remembered things.
Battles.
Kings.
Deaths.
And sometimes…
Secrets.
Three other scavengers walked ahead of him through the broken corridor.
One carried a lantern.
Another dragged a sack filled with scrap metal.
The third kept glancing nervously at the cracked ceiling above them.
"We're not going deeper," the lantern carrier muttered.
"This part of the ruin isn't mapped."
Kael barely heard him.
The Echo in the walls was louder today.
Something inside the ruins felt… awake.
He reached into his coat and pulled out a small object.
The compass.
Its needle trembled slightly.
Then stopped.
Pointing forward.
Kael frowned.
That wasn't normal.
The compass only reacted when Echo patterns changed.
Something deeper inside the ruins had moved.
He stepped past the other scavengers.
"Hey," one of them said.
"Where are you going?"
Kael didn't stop.
"Checking something."
"You're going alone?"
"Looks that way."
The scavenger cursed quietly.
"Kid's going to get himself killed."
Kael moved deeper into the ruin.
The corridor narrowed.
Dust drifted through the air.
The Echo grew louder.
Then—
A sharp click.
Kael froze.
He looked down.
The floor tile beneath his foot sank slightly.
A trap.
He jumped back.
The tile collapsed.
A deep pit opened where he had been standing seconds earlier.
Kael exhaled slowly.
"Right."
He looked down the corridor again.
The compass needle vibrated.
Pointing deeper.
Something in the Ashfall Ruins had awakened.