The storm had passed, but the silence it left behind was heavier than thunder.
Eudora sat alone on the outskirts of Caelworth, beyond the boundary stones where old trees twisted and the ground sloped into the Mournshade Hollow—a place villagers called "Earth's Breath." They feared it, whispered that cursed things slept below its roots.
He remembered this place from his past life.
No one dared come here.
But he was not like them.
He had nothing to lose.
Wind stirred the trees above. Leaves danced like dying sparks, and the air grew colder as he stepped beneath the canopy. The deeper he went, the more the forest seemed to breathe—each step sinking slightly into moss-covered soil, the smell of damp earth rising around him.
Then he felt it.
A pulse.
Not of life, but of memory. Of power long buried.
He followed the pull—downward, until the trees gave way to a stone stairway choked in vines. At its base, a broken archway yawned open, half-buried in roots. The symbol above it was long faded, but he recognized it.
The mark of the Obsidian Depths.
A forgotten ruin from the age before aura. Long before Ragna. Before everything.
Eudora paused. His heart was pounding—not from fear, but anticipation. He didn't know why he was drawn here. But something ancient and voiceless was calling him.
He stepped inside.
Darkness swallowed him whole.
The air was damp and cold. Water dripped from unseen cracks. The walls were covered in a script he couldn't read, glowing faintly in dull red. It wasn't aura. It wasn't magic.
It was something else.
At the center of the ruin was a chamber—round, silent, and impossibly still.
A black stone floated in the middle. No pedestal. No chains. It simply hung in the air like it defied the world.
It was cracked.
It bled smoke.
And when Eudora stepped closer, he heard it.
A voice.
Not words. Not a language.
But meaning.
You do not belong... yet you are bound.
You have no gift... yet you carry pain.
You have no name... yet you endure.
Eudora's breath hitched.
"What are you?" he asked the void.
The stone pulsed.
Not god. Not curse. Not power.
I am Remnant.
And you... are empty enough to hold me.
Suddenly, the ground shook. The air grew heavy. His body screamed in agony as shadow and memory poured into him. Visions flashed—worlds long dead, kings devoured by their own ambitions, blades that spoke and broke minds.
Then, silence.
Eudora collapsed, gasping.
His hands trembled.
His chest burned.
But deep inside… something now stirred.
Not aura. Not magic.
Something deeper. Older.
Unseen.