While they were speaking, the members of the Sixth Squad had already set to work without waiting for a single order. They fanned out around the encampment, inspecting the terrain with an expert eye, assessing the flow of essence, identifying weak points. Where an ordinary soldier struggled to dig a trench, an Awakened merely placed his palm on the ground - and the stone compacted itself, forming a natural parapet. Further away, a woman with pale hair traced a line of bluish light between two rocks with her fingertips; an illusion field that, seen from a distance, would completely conceal the base behind a veil of shifting mirages.

Their mere presence transformed the place. The defensive camp was turning into a military outpost. The anchor point was becoming a bastion.

But this supernatural efficiency generated a muted tension among the soldiers. They watched the Awakened with that admiration mixed with wariness reserved for weapons that are too sharp. The very air seemed to vibrate to the rhythm of silent incantations, the pulsations of essence manipulated effortlessly.

Even Tonar, who was not easily impressed, kept his jaw tight.

Rhelas approached Elisa. His gaze settled on her with clinical interest.

"So this is her," he stated.

It wasn't a question.

Maggie stepped between them, her hand on the hilt of her saber.

"She remains under my direct supervision, Commander. By the Count's order."

Rhelas raised an eyebrow, vaguely amused.

"I have no intention of touching her. But you should know: her name appears in the Raven's second report. She is considered a potential vector."

A chill ran down Maggie's spine.

"Vector of what?"

"Of a remnant. An echo of the monolith. We don't yet know if it's a link, a contamination, or a summons. But if something were to awaken in these lands, it would express itself through her."

A thick, almost viscous silence fell upon them.

Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.

Rhelas let a few seconds pass before continuing in a neutral tone:

"We will verify it. Discreetly. Zirel, you go with her."

Zirel froze. He opened his mouth to protest, but a look from Maggie silenced him.

She simply nodded.

"Do it. And be back before nightfall."

They left the camp without further ceremony, slipping into the narrow passageway between two sections of ruins.

The fading light stretched their shadows grotesquely.

Zirel took the lead, his fluid silhouette blending with the contours of the stone blocks as if he knew them intimately. Elisa followed a few steps behind, her eyelids half-closed, focused on the strange sensation growing within her.

Each step brought her closer to a murmur.

A sound almost imperceptible, like a voice smothered under layers of earth and time.

"Do you hear it?" she whispered.

Zirel didn't turn around. "Hear what? The wind? The insects? Or your conscience awakening?"

She offered a pale smile. "Neither. It's... different."

The forest opened before them - dense, slanted, bristling with twisted trunks. The branches seemed to lean towards their path, curious or hungry.

The ground, covered in thick, dark moss, muffled their footsteps.

A metallic smell hung in the air, cloying and unpleasant, evoking a mixture of sap and coagulated blood.

Zirel stopped at the foot of a gutted hill.

"Looks like the ground has shifted," he remarked.

Fissures snaked along the slope, and some stones still bore the vestiges of old military inscriptions - almost erased Martissant glyphs.

"This place was part of an outpost," he murmured.

Elisa nodded, her gaze caught on the remains of a broken mast.

"Then why is everything so... intact?"

She pointed to the shreds of a tent. The fabric, though frayed, seemed frozen in an unnatural position, as if immobilized mid-movement.

Further on, a helmet rested on the ground - but inside, no skull. Only a thick, unchanging layer of dust.

"Zirel..."

He didn't answer, absorbed by the examination of a half-buried form: a body sitting against a tree trunk, clad in full armor, head bowed forward. A Martissant soldier.

He reached out his hand - and his palm met a smooth, icy resistance.

The skin, the metal, everything had turned to stone.

They exchanged a meaningful glance.

Around them, there were others. A dozen. Then twenty. All petrified in an impossible calm, captured in an instant.

No cry, no defensive gesture. Nothing but this mineral torpor.

Elisa knelt, her fingers trembling.

"This isn't ordinary stone. It's... solidified essence residue."

"A remnant?"

She nodded. "Something condensed their life energy. As if time had turned against them."

A light gust made the branches shiver.

The surrounding trees trembled in the absence of any wind.

And there, at the edge of the hills, something began to throb. A dull, golden, pulsating light - barely visible between the trunks.

Zirel drew his blade without a sound.

"Stay behind me."

They advanced.

Each step seemed to lengthen the distance. Space itself warped, the light diluted as in a fever dream.

Their breathing echoed too loudly. Their shadows trembled while the ground remained motionless.

Then, they saw.

In the center of a circular clearing stood a structure.

Not natural.

Not human.

An outgrowth of black stone three meters high, bristling with crystalline filaments that glowed with an inverted golden light - as if it were absorbing the world's brightness and returning it in negative.

Elisa staggered.

Her scar burned with an icy fire.

The hum of the gems reached a climax, then tuned to a frequency only she seemed to perceive.

Zirel placed a firm hand on her shoulder.

"We're leaving. Now."

But she didn't move.

The structure vibrated.

For an instant - the space of a heartbeat - the world seemed to breathe through it.

And Elisa saw.

A petrified army, swallowed beneath the earth.

Faces frozen in terror.

A black sun slowly spinning above them.

And, in the deepest part, a voice.

Not a thought. Not a word. A presence.

An ancient, broken syllable, spoken in the language of the first awakening:

"Come."

Elisa stumbled back abruptly, gasping, pupils dilated.

Zirel caught her by the arm, pulling her back.

Their flight was silent, almost unreal, until they emerged once more on the slopes of the hill.

Behind them, the golden light had gone out.

Everything seemed normal.

But the moss clinging to their boots continued to quiver.

Zirel cast a last look at the clearing.

"That wasn't an abandoned camp," he said, his voice low.

"It was a warning."

---

The return to the camp was made under a leaden silence, far heavier than that of the outward journey. Each step seemed to tear Elisa away from the morbid fascination of the clearing, as if the black stone structure was deploying invisible roots to hold her back. She walked, pale and mute, her arms wrapped around herself, her gaze turned inward, reliving the vision that had pierced her.

Zirel, for his part, never took his eyes off her. His scout's stride had become that of a bodyguard, every muscle taut, his senses on maximum alert. He was no longer just scanning the shadows between the trees, but also Elisa's slightest tremors. Rhelas's icy confidence echoed within him: a vector. And what they had just seen confirmed the worst fears. This wasn't a simple physical threat; it was a corruption of reality itself, and Elisa was its anchor point.

When they emerged from the tree line, the camp had changed again. The "anchor point" was no longer recognizable. The illusions of the pale-haired woman now completely blurred its outline, making it oscillate between a pile of rocks and a mirage of dense forest. Only a narrow pass, guarded by an Awakened whose eyes emitted a faint amber glow, allowed entry.

At the sight of them, the man gave an imperceptible nod and stepped aside. Inside, the atmosphere was electric. The supernatural efficiency of the Awakened had transformed anxiety into a controlled, almost religious tension. Maggie's soldiers went about their duties with mechanical precision, casting furtive glances filled with fearful respect at the newcomers.

Maggie and Tonar were waiting for them near the command post, Rhelas at their side. Maggie's face was a mask of professional neutrality, but a deep-seated worry hollowed her gaze.

"Well?" she asked, without preamble.

Zirel glanced at Elisa, who seemed absent, her eyes fixed on a point in the void. He spoke, his report as dry and factual as a slash.

"An old outpost. No survivors. They were all... transformed. Petrified, but not by normal stone. Solidified essence. As if emptied of their life and left as shells." He paused, choosing his words carefully. "And there's a structure. In the center of a clearing. Black stone, crystals, it emits an... inverted light. It warps the space around it."

Rhelas's gaze lit up with icy interest. He turned to Elisa. "And you? What did you perceive?"

Elisa's voice was a hoarse thread, as if eroded from within. "A voice. A presence. It said... 'Come'." She finally raised her eyes, and her turquoise gaze had become an abyss. "I saw a buried army. A black sun. It's not a place, it's a mouth. And it's hungry."

A deathly silence fell over the small group. The sounds of the camp seemed to die away one by one.

"A mouth," Rhelas repeated, more to himself than to the others. His fingers brushed the stigma glowing faintly on his chest. "This matches the forbidden archives. The Chronicles of Hunger. We thought they were legends."

"What legends?" Tonar growled, his impatience finally breaking through.

"Tales from before the kingdoms, before the dragons themselves, perhaps. From a time when the world was more... fluid. When entities fed not on flesh, but on the very essence of things. On life, time, memory. They left behind scars, places where reality had been bitten." His gaze fixed on Elisa. "Your monolith is a scar. That structure in the forest is a tooth."

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.