After leaving the Oasis of Stillness, which had granted them a fleeting moment of lost humanity, Dex and Lumia plunged once more into the unforgiving bowels of Falus Forest. The terrain had begun to change in a radical way: no longer a mere dense forest, it had transformed into something resembling a natural labyrinth of living wooden walls.
The two moved through a narrow, suffocating passage that appeared to have been carved as a sunken gash in the wall of time itself. On either side, colossal and ancient tree trunks soared, so old that their bark had petrified and come to resemble black basalt rock. High above, at a height of dozens of metres, the crowns of these enormous trees had converged and interlocked their dense branches to form a naturally vaulted ceiling, blocking every trace of the sky and trapping breath, mist, and the smell of decay inside.
The ground beneath their feet was treacherous to a terrifying degree. It was not simply soil or mud. It was composed of thick, viscous layers of rotted leaves and dead vines that had accumulated over centuries without finding a path to complete decomposition, thanks to the area's saturation with toxic Mana. This floor formed a malicious spongy carpet that concealed beneath it roots sharp as lances, deep pits, and perhaps the remains of the forest's earlier victims. The air was still and heavy, burdened with a humidity that strangled the lungs, so much so that the faint sound of their breathing and the careful fall of their feet on the wet leaves sounded like a resounding cry amid the suffocating silence that defined the depths of the Forbidden Zone.
Dex moved with slow deliberation, his senses operating at maximum capacity, while Lumia walked behind him in her fluid strides that barely left a trace, her clear silver eyes sweeping the darkness with absolute calm.
Then, without warning, Dex froze entirely in his place, as though an invisible electric shock had struck the base of his spine.
There was no strange sound, no branch snapping, no suspicious movement in the shadows. The alert had not come from his human senses at all. It had come from the deepest point in his being. The Phoenix Core resting in his chest, which had grown more bonded with his soul after the spider battle, had begun to pulse at a different frequency: a slow, heavy rhythm resembling the beat of a distant drum.
Dex understood in that moment that his Phoenix fire sense was evolving. It was no longer content with seeing the living, immediate thermal emissions of creatures, as it had done with the previous beast. Due to the density of Mana at this depth, it had become capable of detecting thermal scars, a rare magical phenomenon: those faint, energetic imprints that living bodies or concentrated fires leave behind, which remain branded in the fabric of a place long after their source has gone. To the Phoenix Core, heat does not perish. It leaves a mark that time cannot erase.
"Here… in this specific place… there was something once. Something that carried a warmth that does not belong to this cold," Dex whispered in a very low voice, crouching on his right knee over a thick pile of decomposed black leaves near the wooden wall of the passage.
He extended his hand toward the pile, but did not begin shifting the leaves randomly or with violence. He understood that careless excavation could destroy delicate evidence or trigger a forgotten magical trap. Instead he half-closed his eyes, focused his energy into the tips of his right hand's fingers, and released extremely thin, nearly microscopic, threads of blue-gold Phoenix fire. Not burning fire, but dry heat directed with surgical precision.
He passed his glowing fingers over the pile, and his fire began to evaporate the moisture, rot, and dead organic layers slowly and gently, without burning what lay beneath. The scene was captivating and strange: a killer and former prisoner, using the most destructive fire in the world, working as a painter or an archaeologist carefully removing layers of calcified dust from a rare ancient artefact.
Behind him, Lumia stood watching what he was doing with silent attention. In this suffocating darkness, her body radiated a faint, cold silver light, serving as a small artificial moon illuminating their immediate surroundings. She was not afraid, but her invisible Celestial aura had automatically expanded to form a silent shield around them: a dome of pure void that warned off and prevented any creature or beast from exploiting Dex's distraction to launch a treacherous attack.
And as the last layers of rot evaporated, beneath the curtain of black leaves, the truth that had been calling to the Phoenix Core was revealed.
He found the charred remains of a very small campfire. But what caught Dex's attention and sparked his immediate admiration was not the ash itself, it was what surrounded it. The fire pit was encircled by a collection of smooth stones arranged with an astonishing geometric precision. These stones had not been scattered randomly or gathered in a primitive manner as some intelligent beasts or ghouls might do for warmth. They had been constructed in a concave geometric circle, angled inward at a specific degree.
"What mastery…" Dex murmured as he ran his finger along the edge of one stone. "Beasts, however intelligent, have no interest in concealing the light of their fires, and they lack the engineering mindset to arrange stones at this angle to function as a thermal reflector concentrating heat toward a single point, while simultaneously preventing the glow from escaping upward to pierce the canopy above."
Dex placed his bare palm gently over the cold black ash. He closed his eyes and allowed the Phoenix Core to read the thermal scar. Through his developed abilities, he could feel the faint, dissolving traces of Mana, Mana that did not belong to the nature of the forest.
"Weeks have passed… perhaps a month or more since this fire was lit," Dex analysed in his mind, his eyes moving quickly to connect the evidence. He lifted a small amount of ash between his fingers and rubbed it. It was completely dry and crumbled like powder, a physical impossibility in an environment where toxic humidity had reached this extreme level. "The ash is dry in a way that defies all logic. This means only one thing: the camp's owner did not rely only on the engineering, they used an advanced magical insulation incantation to repel moisture and prevent smoke from rising and exposing their position."
Dex rose slowly and brushed the ash from his hands. He looked at Lumia, who had been tilting her head slightly in wait for his conclusion, and said in a tone carrying respect blended with caution: "The owner of this place was not a passing wanderer, nor a member of some foolish adventuring party seeking glory. This was a solitary person, a consummate professional, and a precise observer. This camp is not merely the remains of a fire. It is an archive of dust, left deliberately or inadvertently, that tells the story of someone who managed not only to survive, but to settle, watch, and wait amid the horrors of the Forbidden Zone."