Chapter 663: Tomb?

The route toward the tombs veered slightly away from the rapidly flowing stream they had been following.

The river had gradually split into smaller branches, but they had kept to the main one, which had provided a reliable source of drinking water and a convenient place to wash in order to keep clean.

Elion suspected that it had been part of Maya’s reasoning when she suggested following the river, and he couldn’t blame her.

The ladies looked just as fresh as the day they had arrived, putting considerable effort into keeping themselves clean despite the lack of proper sanitary facilities.

Living in the wilderness for so long was never a pleasant experience for anyone, especially women.

As for the matter of relieving themselves, well, it was clear enough how they had been going about that.

They always went into the bushes in pairs, though, lest some hungry beast drag one of them away while she was doing her business. Thankfully, they hadn’t encountered any problems on that front so far.

Once they left the stream behind, the sound of running water gradually faded beneath the rustling of grass and the crunch of loose stones under their boots.

Elion led them through a stretch of scattered trees, keeping the direction of the leaning spire in mind while Cole occasionally moved ahead to check the ground.

It wasn’t long before they came across something resembling an old road.

Much of it had disappeared beneath the soil, but surprisingly, there were a few signs of use, even if they were faded.

"Well, at least we won’t have to keep guessing which way to go," Cole said, scraping his boot over one of the stones to clear away the dirt. He followed the line with his eyes before looking toward Elion. "Does this lead toward what you saw?"

"More or less," Elion replied, stepping onto the broken paving. "We should be able to see it from the ground soon."

The others followed, finding the road considerably easier to walk along despite the roots that had pushed through it.

Yaana moved ahead of Mayumi, balancing along a narrow stretch of exposed stone with her arms held slightly away from her sides, while Uta walked nearby with his hands tucked into his pockets.

The old road carried them farther from the stream, winding between scattered trees before rising toward a long stretch of broken masonry.

At first, Elion took it for the remains of another building, but as they drew closer, he realised it was a wall, its enormous stone blocks leaning against one another beneath a tangled covering of roots.

Beyond it, the jagged spire he had seen from the sky stood against the late afternoon light, its dark surface marked by long, pale grooves that ran almost the entire length of the structure.

Even from here, there was something unsettling about its proportions.

It narrowed as it rose, dividing near the summit into two uneven prongs, one of which had broken away to leave a serrated edge.

Its considerable lean made it seem poised to fall, yet there was a strange grace to it, an elegance that had survived whatever catastrophe had left it standing at such an impossible angle.

Elion slowed as they approached a breach in the outer wall. He had expected more buildings beyond it, perhaps a courtyard surrounding the spire, but the ground on the other side fell away so abruptly that he stopped before taking another step.

The others gathered beside him, and they all stood there without saying a word as an impossible sight unravelled before them.

An immense depression opened beneath their feet, its steep sides descending in broad terraces toward a city of broken stone.

Structures crowded the hollow in bewildering numbers, their pale façades rising from different depths until it became difficult to tell where one level ended and another began.

What had looked like a handful of ruins from a distance were merely the highest crowns of an entire buried settlement.

The leaning spire rose from somewhere deep within it.

Only now could Elion appreciate its true size. Its lower half disappeared between vast, angular buildings, while its shadow stretched across rooftops, courtyards and narrow avenues, darkening whole sections of the hollow.

From the angle of his earlier approach, the enclosing rise had concealed most of what lay below, but standing at the edge, he could see how terribly he had underestimated it.

Concentric walls curved around the depression, enclosing terraces crowded with rectangular towers and broad, flat-roofed structures.

Their surfaces were covered in recessed panels and intricate bands of carving, each building shaped with such severe precision that even their ruin seemed strangely beautiful.

Some rose like enormous stone blades, narrow and windowless, while others spread across several levels, their collapsed upper floors exposing chambers stacked above one another.

Far below, pale mist wove between the buildings, giving the deepest streets a faint, bluish hue. Here and there, sunlight caught an unbroken edge and turned it silver, but most of the hollow lay beneath a cold veil of shadow.

It was magnificent.

It was also so utterly deserted that Elion felt his admiration slowly turn into an eerie feeling of unease.

"This looks more like a city than a tomb," he said, his gaze moving across the seemingly endless rows of structures. "How much of this place is down there?"

Yaana stepped closer to the breach, though she kept well back from the edge. Her usual smile had faded into an expression of uncertain wonder as she looked from the towering spire to the streets beneath it.

"Are we sure this is the right place?" she asked. "Because that seems like a rather big thing to leave off a map."

Cole had already retrieved the folded sheet from Maya. He spread it against a relatively flat section of the wall, pressing down its corners while he studied the surrounding landmarks, then glanced back toward the direction of the stream.

"The location checks out," he said slowly. "The distance from the river, the direction we’ve been travelling, even that rise over there. But the scale of the structures..." He looked into the depression again and shook his head. "There’s nothing on here that suggests anything this large."

"Perhaps this place appeared recently," Elion suggested, even though he was very uncertain about that assessment.

This place looked like it had been in ruins for centuries...

’Wait, actually, centuries have passed here, no?’ That certainly made his suggestion much more believable.

Maya leaned beside him to inspect the drawing, though Elion doubted a second pair of eyes would make the little mark on the paper any more useful.

After a moment, she straightened, her gaze resting on a broad stairway descending along the inside of the wall.

"We’ll have a look," she said. "Stay together, though. There are too many places down there where we could lose sight of one another. And who knows what could be waiting down there."

Elion nodded and stepped through the breach first, testing the nearest stair before putting his full weight on it. The stone held, and he began descending, with the others following close behind.

The steps were unusually broad and shallow, their outer edges worn smooth while their centres remained almost untouched.

In places, fallen masonry forced them toward the wall, and Elion moved several loose blocks aside before allowing the others past.

Each stone he displaced struck the steps below with a heavy knock, the sound travelling farther into the hollow than it should have before returning in a succession of faint echoes.