Here... inside the tower where the walls were breathing.
Not stones, but pale veins pulsing in ashen living walls, stretching upward like colossal arteries, carrying something with no name.
The first steps were cautious. Each team took a corner of the circular hall, their eyes watching, their breaths nearly held.
The group that had entered by sacrificing was the calmest. As if the death of their companion wasn't only an offering, but a key to a deeper meaning.
The Shape-Shifting and Illusion Team, having reclaimed their bodies between the thresholds, seemed disoriented for a moment... then they began to move, testing the shadows. They spoke through gestures, not words.
As for the Hidden Tongue Team, it was the seventh , that eternal silent one, who moved first. He walked to the center of the hall, where a vast symbol was carved into the floor—a maze of lines bleeding faint purple light.
He raised his gaze to the ceiling, then knelt and placed his hand at the center of the sigil.
The light changed.
Someone whispered: "What is he doing?"
But before an answer could come, the ground trembled beneath them.
The entire hall shuddered, and the walls suddenly breathed like a colossal being awakening from a slumber that had lasted centuries.
From the sigil where the silent one placed his hand, phosphorescent flashes began to rise like mist, spreading across the floor, as if the maze had become a path drawn before them... or a trap enticing one more step.
The silence was shattered.
A deep, inhuman voice emerged—not from a mouth, but as if the stones themselves had spoken:
"First floor, you all have succeeded."
The floor began to shift around the circle. Stone stairs descended from above, as if the tower were building its next floor before them—or revealing it... piece by piece.
The teams moved. There was no command, no agreement. Just an internal feeling shared by all: what had been summoned... could no longer be stopped.
The Offering Team moved first. Their leader clasped his hands behind his back and looked upward without a word. His members followed him silently.
The Shape-Shifting and Illusion Team cloaked themselves in shadow, taking positions along the sides, alert for traps that might await them.
The Hidden Tongue Team, under the command of the seventh, moved forward without showing any emotion. It felt like their footsteps were carved into the memory of the place.
Then the old man with the square turban moved. He looked at no one. Waited for no one. Climbed the stairs alone.
As for the rest of the teams who had followed and passed the guardian knight, they remained below for a moment, observing. But the ground behind them began to close slowly.
The tower does not leave its doors open for long.
...
On the second floor, there was no ceiling. Only a thick darkness above them, as if they were in a corridor within a living mountain, or inside the throat of something that might devour them at any moment.
On the sides, faces began to appear.
Massive human-like faces... carved into the walls, bearing features belonging to no known age. Their eyes were shut—but some began to open slowly... one by one.
One member of the Shape-Shifting Team whispered: "It's looking at us."
Another responded without a word, with a hand gesture: Let it look... as long as it does not speak.
But it spoke.
Only one face—larger than the rest—opened its eyes fully and moved its mouth from within the stone wall:
"He who does not reveal himself... will be erased from the memory of stone."
They all looked at one another. Silence replaced fear. Only the silent one, the seventh individual, stepped forward to the center of the hall.
Then... he removed his mask.
It was the first time his face was seen. It was not a remarkable face. In fact, it was excessively plain—as if made only to be forgotten.
But the wall... smiled.
"Your memory is too faint to be forgotten."
And in an instant, the entire floor quaked, and the sound of the upper ceiling shattering was heard, revealing the stairs that led to the third floor... where no stone moved, but an eye watched.
...
The steps awaited them. As if they had appeared not to invite, but to test.
The first steps toward the third floor made no echo... as if they were being swallowed. The air was heavier. The walls narrower. And the darkness above took the form of an infinite vault, lit only by gray lines in the stone, pulsing like blood veins in a body long dead, yet never buried.
When they reached the first hall... they all stopped.
The walls here were smooth. Entirely black. No carvings. No shadows.
But the ceiling... was not a ceiling.
It was a slanted surface above them, like an inverted pyramid. And whenever one looked up, they saw themselves upside down... as if they were all reflections in an ancient mirror, and they were only echoes of those who had entered before.
Then… a voice echoed, as if from inside the mind, not outside:
"Here the name is revealed. And the final stone written."
And the hall split apart.
Each team was pulled into a corridor—there was no decision, only a hidden force that drew each of them toward a different passage.
Each corridor, a rite. Each passage, a question.
The Offering Team found themselves in a hall filled with ash. Before them stood a statue, half melted as if by an invisible fire… arms outstretched as if asking for a nameless heart.
The Shape-Shifting and Illusion Team walked between walls that reflected their faces—but did not match them. Each image was a "possibility" of what they might become… or what they could never escape.
The Hidden Tongue Team faced a door with no lock, no handle, but it pulsed. And once again, it was only the seventh individual who could touch it.
As for the old man with the turban… he entered a place no one could describe—for it simply wasn't a place.
...
In the depths of the third floor, when the silent rites were completed and the mysterious letters appeared on the walls, the center trembled. And the final voice echoed:
"Now… we are written anew."
It was not just a voice... but an act.
The void turned in on itself. The walls folded like pages in a violently closed book. The light wasn't illumination, but a tear in the fabric of this world, pulling them inside—not as a gate, but as a decision.
And in a flash, they found themselves standing on the edge of a vast plain.
...
That plain was not a place. It was a promised arena.
Through forgotten eons, this void was buried beneath the Mountains of Agra Talon, like a heart entombed in the chest of a dead continent, and now... it beat again.
It stretched before them to the horizon, in a dark earthen color tinged with ash, coated in dust not swept by winds—but risen from the ground, as if the land remembered the names once etched into it.
And the Mountains of Agra Talon...
The mountains surrounding this void now seemed to bow. Their towering peaks tilted slowly—not from age, but as if bearing witness to what should never have returned.
In the heart of the plain, temples began to rise.
To the right, temples seemingly carved from a single block, with tall columns like trembling stone fingers inscribed with glyphs. Vines crept across their walls—vines not like any known plant, but threads of longing for a civilization that had fallen into the void.
To the left, other temples... different. As if their carving reversed time—not construction, but a revealing of something once hidden, now uncovered.
And between the temples… stretched a grand road.
A single, straight road, carved into the rock, untouched by dust. On either side, statues... each statue facing another. Rows of men and women whose faces resembled no humans—their heads crowned with conical diadems, their eyes closed. Some held swords. Others, spears.
Even the sky began to change.
The clouds dispersed as if forcibly held in place for centuries. The color above was not celestial, but somewhere between violet and ash—like a night being built, stone by stone.
And suddenly… the earth trembled.
Not like an earthquake—but like the scream of a slumbering entity whose covers were torn away.
From the heart of the plain… a colossal black pyramid began to rise.
Not being built… but being freed.
Its peak emerged first, sharp and silent, scattering shards of black light that did not illuminate—but extinguished all around them.
Then the first wall appeared. Then the second… as if the pyramid had not only been buried, but imprisoned within the shell of time itself.
It was too vast to behold in full. Its single eye at the top saw no one… but waited to be seen.
...
And beyond the plain, on the rocky hills outside the tower, stood those who had yet to enter. Sorcerers, mercenaries, seers, shadow mages… all of them witnessed the trembling earth, the rising dust from within the mountains, and the light slashing the sky like an inverted meteor.
One of them shouted: "Has… the Ruin been opened?"
But no one answered.
They only ran.
Some toward the plain. Some toward their deaths.
As for the tower… it began to collapse.
As if its purpose had ended. As if the stone itself had spoken its last word. It split from above, its levels peeling off like skin from an ancient wound. And at its top… the watching eye vanished.
...
In the heart of the plain, the teams that had first entered the tower now stood at the edges of the great road.
Each team moved toward its fate.
Toward a temple.
Toward a statue.
Toward the pyramid.
But none of them yet understood... that this was not a test of power.
But of memory.
And only those who remembered they had been here before… would survive.
And thus… the earth sealed its silence, and the dark continent began to speak its tale and reveal its secrets.