Chapter 728: A Mural

Many had collapsed.

Broken balustrades hung above empty space, while sections of stairway clung to the walls, their remaining steps leading toward gaps through which the chamber below was plainly visible.

Yet even in its ruin, the workmanship possessed an extraordinary grace.

Every curve seemed carefully measured, every carved edge belonging to a greater design that time had only partially succeeded in destroying.

A pale radiance wandered beneath the floor.

Elion looked down, finding thin streams of mana moving through the grooves beneath his feet.

They followed an intricate arrangement of interlocking circles before disappearing beneath the stone, their light reflected in patches of polished flooring that had somehow escaped the dust.

"It must have been beautiful," Althea murmured.

Elion nodded, his gaze traveling across the immense room. There was almost nothing inside it.

A few shattered pedestals occupied the outer edges of the chamber, but whatever they had once displayed was gone. Farther in, fragments of collapsed galleries lay scattered across the floor, leaving narrow paths between heaps of ancient debris.

Kali stopped in her tracks, and Elion followed her gaze.

Across the far wall stretched an enormous mural.

Its colors had endured where much of the surrounding stone had not. Rich blue, burnished gold, and deep crimson flowed across the pale surface, their hues softened beneath a thin accumulation of dust but still astonishingly vivid.

The artwork continued between the columns, unfolding in a succession of scenes joined by flowing borders.

From a distance, those borders resembled vines, though as Elion approached, he noticed that some were chains, delicately rendered links winding between the images.

He slowed.

The mural depicted cities, armies, and figures standing beneath bloody skies. In one section, slender towers rose above a gathering of people, their faces turned up toward something beyond a missing part of the mural in worship.

Farther along, banners streamed above ranks of soldiers, while immense shadows occupied a portion of the wall damaged by a deep fracture.

There was a story here.

Unlike the broken murals they had found beneath the mountain, enough of this one remained for him to follow the sequence of images. Whether he would understand what they meant was another matter entirely.

Elion moved toward the beginning.

The first scene showed an army assembled before a city. Golden light shone upon their armor, and their raised banners bore a symbol picked out with such precision that he could still make out its smallest lines.

He leaned closer, and it seemed almost as if the banners moved. Elion frowned, thinking he had imagined it, but he knew there was no way he could have.

The light beneath his feet suddenly dimmed, and the chamber disappeared.

Darkness swept across his vision so abruptly that he stumbled, throwing out a hand to catch himself against a column that was no longer there.

The sound of a violent gush whipping about reached his ears.

"Huh?"

Elion straightened sharply, realizing that he was standing upon a vast, open field.

The spire was gone. So were Kali, Althea, and the quiet chamber with its broken galleries. In their place stretched a broad plain beneath a turbulent sky, its trampled earth shaking with the thunder of approaching armies.

His heart lurched.

’You have got to be kidding me.’

Had he been thrown into another trial?

The thought brought an immediate surge of alarm. He had only been looking at a damned painting, and somehow, that had been enough to drag him into another situation like the bloodline trials!?

"Shit?"

He reached for Kurogoroshi and kicked the ground running, only to realize that nothing had appeared in his hand.

He tried again, his gaze flicking between the two armies bearing down on his position, but once again, his beloved sword didn’t appear.

’Come on!’

To his left, ranks of armored soldiers charged beneath streaming banners, their shields raised and their weapons gleaming beneath the troubled daylight.

The ground trembled under the hooves of enormous mounts, while voices rose in a deafening chorus that swallowed his next curse.

From the opposite direction came another force.

Through the churned dust, he caught flashes of dark armor and the serrated outlines of advancing weapons. There were shapes behind them far larger than ordinary soldiers, but he had no time to study them.

He was standing directly between the two sides.

Elion turned, preparing to throw himself out of their path, when the foremost rider reached him.

The soldier didn’t slow.

His mount plunged straight through Elion, and he froze, realizing that there was no impact. The creature passed through his body as though he were nothing more than a patch of drifting mist.

Another followed.

Then an entire rank swept through him, their armor flashing around his face as they crashed into the opposing line.

The collision was deafening.

Spears struck shields, swords rang against armor, and the first screams rose above the tumult. Elion stood motionless within it all, watching a broken shaft tumble through his chest without disturbing him.

Slowly, he raised his hands, noticing that their edges were indistinct. He could see the battlefield through them.

Pale wisps trailed from his fingers, briefly unraveling before gathering around the vague outlines of his palms. Looking down, he found that the rest of his body was much the same, its familiar shape reduced to a translucent apparition.

No one looked at him, and they didn’t even seem to know that he was there.

Elion stared as another soldier stumbled through his shoulder, desperately raising a shield against an incoming blow.

He wasn’t standing among them as a participant.

He was little more than a spectral wisp, a ghost upon a battlefield that continued raging without the slightest awareness of his existence.

The battle continued around him, its clamor swelling until Elion could no longer distinguish one cry from another.

Soldiers fell beneath the press of advancing bodies, their places immediately taken by those behind them, while spells arced overhead in magnificent streaks of color.

He watched a warrior raise his sword, its edge blazing as it descended toward an enemy.

Before the blow landed, the light upon the blade expanded.

It filled the battlefield, swallowing the soldiers and their banners, and when its brilliance receded, Elion was standing above a mountain range.

Two figures faced one another beneath a fractured sky.

They looked almost insignificant against that immense backdrop, but the moment one of them moved, the illusion of their smallness vanished.

A roar erupted from the nearer figure, and the mountains shook.