As Axel crossed the magical circle, he was suddenly blinded by a bright light in the sky, shining down on him. Reacting instinctively, the boy closed his eyes to protect himself.
After a bit of time to adjust to the lighting, Axel opened his eyes and saw that he was in a decrepit temple, seemingly abandoned by time itself, forsaken by its followers. Where once stood magnificent statues, were now broken chunks of marble. The once monumental pillars, were now cracked and covered with moss. The walls, once proud and overbearing, now old and frail.
What is this place? He Thought while trying to find a place to step that wasn't covered in dust. But as he took one step forward, a deep rumbling started from the center of the temple, shaking the ground with a force that almost knocked over the only person inside it.
Axel turned around to try to go back through the circle but when he did, he stopped in his tracks. The circle was gone, as if it was never there. He had no way back.
As he was coming to terms with what happened, another inexplicable thing occurred. A searing pain enveloped him and it felt as though his soul was being observed by something unfathomable. His screams started echoing across the temple as the pain grew worse and worse, creating a cacophony of noise, trying fruitlessly to drown out the pain engulfing him.
Sweat dripped down the pathetic figure of the boy as he started scratching himself to redirect his pain but it didn't work. the two liquids created a puddle around him, serving as his only accomplishment.
Next, he tried scratching the marble floor. Even though his nails started falling off one by one, the pain was nothing compared to what was happening to his soul.
As a desperate attempt to shield Axel from the pain, his mind approached the abyss known as insanity, everything came to a halt, Letting him fall unconscious on the spacious floor of the ruins.
An unbelievable sight occurred as the temple was starting to shift and move, the broken parts reversing back to their original place, creating a spectacle befitting of the divine, the collapsed roofs floating up to their original place, the rooms shifting and changing, the broken statues of warriors reclaiming their magnificence, each of the shields imprinted with a gorgon head, their eyes glowing red for a few minutes before calming down.
The temple felt alive, spurred to movement by its untimely visitor, its cracked walls rearranging themselves to create three new rooms, each with a symbol, first written in an ancient language, then shifting to Axel's native tongue, simply stating one, two and three respectively.
Liquid metal seeped from the cracks in the ground, converging and solidifying to form a sword an experienced eye would immediately think was rapier but at second glance would see was terribly wrong.
The sword had a design that would baffle any blacksmith. It focused entirely on defense and countering by being almost weightless and having a wide handguard. The sword's length reached 140cm, longer than a normal rapier while its width was also increased to parry more. It was made with the purpose to deflect, block and counter anything.
The blade was double sided, and its handle made from the same blueish-silver metal, but its shade slightly lighter, molded by the mana in the air to make its grip sturdier. It had no carvings or designs except for the same gorgon head as the shields of the statues placed on the base of the hilt.
The air thickened with mana, seeping from the multitude of cracks. Trees magically rose from the sparse vegetation, bearing red fruit in a process that should have taken decades. Water started flowing in a serene stream across the ground of the temple, its origins unknown. The only place left unchanged was the numbered rooms.
One of the tree's branches broke off , levitating towards the sword, stopping right before it and turning into a beautiful sheath and sheathing itself.
The sword then levitated towards the wall on the opposite of the three named chambers and two hooked pieces of marble jutted out of the wall, creating a stand for the weapon.