Chapter 117- The source....

Chapter 117: Chapter 117- The source....

The group started to walk down the stairway that had opened before them, following close behind the skeleton that led the way.

The stairs sank into total darkness, no light of any kind reaching down from above. Leo raised a hand and summoned the Eternal flame, letting it drift ahead to light the path. Hugh did the same beside him as his own flame flickering to life, and one by one the other mages in the party followed suit, each adding their own small light until the stairway was bathed in a patchwork glow.

Hugh studied the structure carefully as they made their way down, running his eyes over every surface they passed.

The stairs themselves seemed to have been cut straight from blackstones, their edges worn smooth by centuries of wear passing over them. At first, violet light still clung faintly to the walls — the same glow that filled the fortress above, threaded through with tiny crackles of electric spark. Those sparks helped, casting just enough extra light to make the stairway a little easier to navigate.

But the deeper they went, the more the sparks began to die out, one after another, until eventually there wasn’t a single one left.

By the time the last spark vanished, a cold chill had begun creeping up their spines, slow and unwelcome.

Leo paused mid-step. Behind him, the rest of the party stopped as well. He focused, straining to listen, and realized the faint crackling hum of lightning that had followed them from above was simply gone now — swallowed by the silence.

Hugh dragged a finger along the wall and frowned down at his fingertips, turning them over as though checking for something specific.

Shen’s formation continued to scan the surrounding area steadily, but so far it hadn’t picked up on anything unusual.

They pressed onward regardless.

The air grew colder with every step down, the temperature dropping in a way that felt almost eerie.

Even the sound of their own footsteps had begun to feel strange — muffled, distant, as though something unseen in the air itself were dampening every noise they made.

Elly had gone quiet. She still floated beside them in her usual holographic form, but something about her posture had changed; she seemed deep in the middle of analyzing whatever surrounded them.

"Elly?" Leo called out to her.

She didn’t answer right away, clearly caught up in whatever task she’d assigned herself.

A long pause stretched out.

Finally, she spoke. "Master... there seems to be another type of mana present here."

"Another type of mana? What kind?" Leo asked, turning the question over in his mind for a moment. He’d sensed something too, something faint and unfamiliar, though he couldn’t recall ever encountering anything quite like it before.

"I can’t pinpoint it exactly yet," Elly admitted, "but it’s distinct from any natural mana signature I’ve recorded."

Leo nodded slowly and kept moving forward.

The staircase eventually bottomed out into a corridor — though calling it a simple tunnel would have undersold it. Something about the space felt different from both the stairway above and the lightning vault they’d left behind.

Shen studied the surroundings and was quick to point out the difference himself. "The formations carved into this section are nothing like what we’ve seen anywhere else in this fortress. It almost looks like the work of an entirely different civilization, or maybe even a different race altogether."

Rather than the usual runes, these formations looked as if they’d been pressed directly into the stone, more like seals than inscriptions. Shen thought.

As they stepped further into the corridor, even the air around them felt subtly different, heavier somehow.

Elly scanned the space as they moved, gradually mapping out the corridor’s layout. "The concealed sections are finally showing up in my scans. Whatever array was hiding them managed to throw off my scanning waves for a while."

The map slowly filled in as they continued exploring, still trailing behind the skeleton that guided them silently through corridor after corridor.

Eventually the passage opened up into a much larger corridor, and here the skeleton finally came to a stop.

The rest of the party filed in after it, one by one, until everyone stood inside the wider space.

The skeleton that had led them fell still once more, settling back into that same statue-like stillness they’d seen before.

Leo glanced around and spotted three more skeletons standing motionless throughout the hall, just as frozen as the first.

"The one that brought us here stopped moving, so I’m guessing these three are supposed to take over from here?" Master Rook offered, though nothing about his tone sounded certain.

None of the skeletons moved.

The party spread out cautiously as they advanced further into the corridor, each of them watching the walls and floor for anything out of place.

Shen probed at the surrounding stone, and his formation detector suddenly began to flicker to life.

"There’s something within these stone," he said. "Might be a formation."

"What?" Leo moved closer to see for himself.

Shen shook his head slightly. "I can’t say for certain yet."

Leo nodded and let him keep working.

Meanwhile, Hugh had gone back to examining the walls up close. Something on the surface caught his eye, and when he reached out to touch it, a strange residue clung to his fingertips. He tried to wipe it away, but with nothing else on hand, he pulled out his rag instead. The smell that came off the residue was so foul he nearly gagged right there on the spot.

"This stuff sticks like glue and smells like absolute shit," he muttered.

Rook let out a short chuckle at that but didn’t bother adding anything further.

The air kept growing colder the longer they lingered.

Shen, still working the room, finally found something worth investigating — his detector flickering with unusual intensity at one particular spot on the wall. He ran his hands carefully along the surface and discovered a series of geometric patterns carved deep into the stone.

After studying them for a while, he finally spoke. "These aren’t defensive formations."

Leo blinked. "Concealment, then?"

Shen shook his head again. "No. Not that either."

He examined the patterns a little longer before continuing.

"These formations look like they’re meant to preserve something."

"Preserve?" Leo repeated, falling silent as he turned the word over in his mind.

"This whole place was already hidden so carefully," someone murmured, "and now they’re going through the trouble of preserving something on top of that... what could possibly be worth that much effort?" The question hung there, and one by one, everyone began turning it over in their heads, searching for an answer that wouldn’t come easily.

Leo looked ahead down the corridor, unwilling to dwell on it any longer than he had to.

The passage grew darker the further they advanced, the flames they carried seeming to shrink and struggle against whatever pressed in around them.

Eventually they passed beyond the corridor entirely and stepped into a wide chamber.

The chamber was lined with stone alcoves running along every wall, and something had clearly been placed carefully within each one. Bones. Ancient remains, long since stripped of anything but bone and dust.

They weren’t scattered carelessly, either — someone had arranged them with obvious deliberate care. Some rested inside open alcoves, others sealed away behind stone niches, and still others simply laid out in careful, deliberate rows.

Scattered among the remains were old and unfamiliar objects, artifacts strange enough that not even Leo’s forge sight could identify what they were meant to be.

Shen surveyed the chamber, his voice quiet. "They were placed here on purpose. Is this what the formation was meant to preserve?" he muttered, half to himself.

Rook exhaled slowly, and his breath fogged visibly in front of him. "Is it just me, or is this room getting colder by the minute?" he asked.

Leo nodded in agreement. "Colder," he said, "and quieter, too."

Elona and the rest of the party grew more alert as well, falling instinctively into more defensive stances, weapons closer to hand than before.

As they pressed deeper, the formations around them grew denser, almost as if the walls themselves were subtly guiding their path forward.

Leo noticed the shift immediately. "We seem to be heading toward something specific."

Shen nodded in agreement. "The formations keep getting more concentrated the further we move in this direction. Whatever’s drawing them together, we’re getting closer to it."

Elona spoke up, her voice steady and resolute despite the growing unease in the room. "We should keep moving. Save the questions for later — we’ll get our answers soon enough."

So they continued on.

Leo glanced back over his shoulder and saw the three skeletons still standing exactly where they’d left them in the corridor behind, not having moved an inch.

The corridor eventually narrowed and funneled into yet another chamber. Leo’s flame still burned steadily in his hand, but even he couldn’t make out anything more than a single meter ahead of himself.

The air here felt thick, saturated with something that could only be described as dark energy. Dark, smoke-like clouds drifted lazily through the space, curling around them and sending a fresh chill down everybody’s spine in the room.

This new chamber dwarfed everything they’d encountered so far — larger even than the lightning general’s vault had been.

The party instinctively grouped closer together as they took in their surroundings, though there was very little they could actually make out in the gloom.

Leo pushed his flame outward, trying to extend its reach, but the light simply refused to travel. The walls themselves seemed built to swallow illumination whole — constructed in some way that let them absorb light instead of reflecting or refracting it like any normal surface would.

On top of that, the room carried some kind of sound-dampening effect, muting their voices as though everything had been turned down to the barest whisper. They could barely hear one another even standing close.

Leo, at least, could see a little further than the rest thanks to his forge sight.

Through it, he could just barely make out some kind of shape looming ahead, though its edges refused to resolve into anything clear. He tried to picture it in his mind, tried to force some sense of scale or form onto the vague outline, but it stayed frustratingly indistinct. Whatever it was, it clearly had dimensions, clearly had weight, clearly occupied real space — and yet he still couldn’t determine what it actually was. His flame simply wasn’t strong enough to illuminate it properly.

Elly kept scanning, undeterred.

A long pause followed. Her holographic form flickered erratically, readings cycling faster than Leo had ever seen from her before. The glow of her projection was the only light in the room that even attempted to reach toward that dark, distant center — and even it fell noticeably short.

She was processing something that clearly exceeded the limits of her usual framework, working through it as fast as her systems would allow.

No one in the party spoke. No one dared move. The only sound in the entire chamber was the faint hum of her ongoing analysis — barely audible, gone almost the instant it registered.

Then, finally, the scan completed. A beat of total silence followed.

"Master..." Her voice came out small, fragile even, a single thread of sound swallowed almost instantly by the vastness of the chamber around them. "I believe we’ve found the source."

Leo turned his gaze toward the shape ahead. Then toward Elly. Then back toward the darkness once more.

The source.....?