The fog peeled back.
Not all at once, not like mist fleeing heat—but like a curtain slowly drawn, as though the world itself hesitated to reveal what lay beyond. Inch by inch, the glow became shape. A causeway. Broken, half-sunken stone slabs leading into the depths of the ravine like vertebrae in the back of a buried beast.
Leon advanced, slow and silent.
The others followed.
To their left, the cliff face was smooth—unnaturally so, as if carved by hands that no longer remembered softness. To the right, jagged ridges rose like frozen waves, shadowed in angles that swallowed torchlight.
And ahead, where the glow pulsed, was a gate.
Not a door. Not iron or wood.
A gate of bone.
It arched high above them, crafted from rib-thick white spires and run through with sinew, hardened and blackened with age. At its peak sat an eye—hollow, sculpted, eternal.
"What is this place?" Kellen muttered.
Elena was pale. "It's not a ruin. It's not even a tomb. It's a vault."
