Chapter 264: The Buried Settlement

The tunnel stretched farther than Arthur expected. They’d been walking for nearly ten minutes, following the enormous passage left behind by the creature beneath the road, the walls gradually changing as they went deeper, packed earth and stone at first, then fragments of worked masonry, a broken pillar, a section of tiled flooring, part of a wall, then an entire doorway.

Arthur slowed. "Wait."

Everyone stopped as he stepped toward the doorway, half buried in earth but unmistakably artificial in shape.

Athena came beside him immediately. "This wasn’t part of the tunnel."

"No." He brushed away some dirt around the entrance, revealing another wall behind it, then another.

Her eyes widened. "This is a building."

Luna stepped forward. "A building?"

"We’re underneath the city," Arthur nodded.

Sun looked around. "We were already underneath the city."

"Further underneath."

Sun sighed. "I preferred when you weren’t making distinctions like that."

Mithra giggled, and Kong simply looked into the dark doorway.

Arthur entered first, the room beyond small and looking empty at first glance. Then Athena raised her light, and everyone went silent. A bed. A small stone table. Several clay bowls. A cooking stove built into the wall. Shelves. A broken water container. And hanging from one wall, a piece of ancient cloth, preserved surprisingly well by the dry environment.

Luna walked inside slowly and touched the edge of the fabric. "This was someone’s home." Her voice was quieter than before.

Arthur looked around. There was nothing grand here, no treasure, no powerful artifact, no ancient weapon, just a home. Someone had cooked here. Someone had slept here. Someone had probably complained about having to clean the same table every day.

He smiled faintly. "It feels strange."

"Why?" Athena looked at him.

"We’ve seen so many statues." He looked at the abandoned room. "But this is the first time it feels like we’re actually looking at the people who lived here."

She nodded. "That’s because statues preserve what people wanted remembered." She looked around. "This preserves what they actually were."

They continued deeper into the buried district, and with every room they entered, the ancient civilization became less like a mystery and more like a collection of ordinary lives. A kitchen filled with stone cooking equipment. A storage room containing sealed jars. A courtyard where the remains of an old garden still surrounded a dry fountain. Another building held rows of small stone seats.

Athena stopped at the entrance. "This is a school."

"A school?" Sun looked inside. Writing tablets scattered across the floor, some still holding crude drawings, animals, plants, stars, a few little more than simple shapes.

Kong picked one up, stared at the drawing, then looked at Arthur. He took it. The carving showed a tiny Beast standing beside a much larger one. He smiled. "Looks like someone was learning how to draw."

Kong nodded seriously, then pointed at himself.

Arthur looked at the tablet, then at Kong. "You think that’s you?"

Kong grinned.

Sun snorted. "I don’t see the resemblance."

Kong glared at him.

Sun immediately looked away. "I said nothing."

Mithra laughed, and even Luna smiled. For a brief moment, the buried city didn’t feel quite so dead.

They found toys next, small carved Beasts, little wooden figures, a stone ball. One particularly strange toy was shaped like a miniature version of one of the ancient Mirror symbols. Arthur picked it up, the tiny thing fitting comfortably in his palm, and turned it over. Nothing happened. He handed it to Athena.

She examined it carefully. "A child’s toy."

"You can tell?"

"The edges are worn." She pointed toward one side. "Someone played with it frequently."

He looked back at the room. It was difficult to imagine, thousands of years ago, someone had probably sat right there, a child holding that toy, maybe showing it to their parents, maybe fighting with another child over it, maybe losing it and crying. And now he was standing there holding it after all that time.

Luna remained quiet, studying the walls. Then she suddenly stopped. "Wait."

Arthur turned. She was staring at the doorway, carvings around the frame that looked at first like ordinary decorative patterns. She reached out slowly and traced one of them. "I know this."

Athena came over immediately. "You recognize it?"

Luna nodded. "This pattern." She pointed toward several curved lines. "It resembles the symbols my tribe used."

"You mean the Venus Tribe?" Arthur asked.

"Yes." Her expression turned complicated as she moved from one carving to another. "The way they arranged the symbols, the shape of the flowers." Her voice trembled slightly. "This is too similar."

Athena examined the markings. "Could your tribe have copied them?"

Luna shook her head. "Our elders always said the Venus Tribe had guarded the Mirror for generations." She looked around the buried settlement. "But they never told us there were connections to another civilization." She touched the wall again. "Maybe they didn’t know."

Arthur watched her. Luna had always spoken about her ancestors with pride, but now there was something different in her expression, wonder and sadness both.

"They were here," she whispered.

"Looks like it," he nodded.

She looked down the ancient street. "Then my ancestors weren’t alone."

Athena crouched near another carving. "These aren’t just similar." She pointed toward a symbol. "They share structural elements."

Luna knelt beside her. "That’s an Endou symbol."

"Endou?" Arthur looked at them.

"The Endou Tribe."

The same name immediately brought Varka Endou to mind, the same tribe that had once been connected to the Mirrors, the same tribe whose descendants had apparently known far more about the ancient civilization than Luna’s people had.

Athena carefully copied the symbols into her notes. "We need to preserve these."

"Yes," Luna nodded, looking at the carvings again. "I want to know why our people were connected to them."

"Then we’ll find out," Arthur smiled.

"You say that like it’s simple."

"It’s not." He shrugged. "But we’re already here."

"That is usually how these problems begin," Sun muttered from behind them.

They continued, and eventually the buried settlement opened into a larger communal courtyard. Unlike the houses, this area had been decorated, stone figures standing around the perimeter, some depicting families, parents beside children, adults holding the hands of smaller figures, several showing Beasts beside humans. Flowers carved into the walls. Trees. Rivers. Mountains. The ordinary things people had considered worth preserving.

Arthur walked slowly through the courtyard. "This place is different."

"It’s a residential district," Athena nodded.

"But why bury it?"

She didn’t answer. That question had no obvious answer. The settlement hadn’t been destroyed the way the upper city had. It had been covered. Hidden. As if someone had wanted the entire district forgotten.

Arthur looked toward the far end of the courtyard, where a massive mural covered the wall, deliberately painted and carved into the stone unlike the smaller carvings around them.

Athena’s eyes lit up immediately. "Oh." She walked closer, and everyone followed.

The mural depicted five enormous circular objects, each surrounded by different symbols, fire, water, earth, and two others whose symbols were harder to identify. Arthur recognized them immediately. "The Five Mirrors."

She nodded. "Yes."

Luna stepped closer. "My ancestors told stories about them."

Arthur studied the mural. The four visible Mirrors were clearly represented, but something was wrong. He counted them again. One. Two. Three. Four. He looked across the mural. There should have been five.

He pointed. "There’s one missing."

Athena froze, staring at the mural, counting once, then twice. Her expression changed. "You’re right."

Sun stepped closer. "You’re telling me the ancient people forgot how to count to five?"

She ignored him. "There are five spaces."

Arthur looked. She was right. The mural had clearly been designed around five positions. Four contained Mirrors. The fifth was empty, not damaged, not broken, empty, without even a faded outline where a fifth Mirror should have been.

Luna frowned. "Maybe the fifth Mirror was destroyed."

Athena shook her head. "If it had been painted here and later destroyed, there would be some trace."

"Then maybe they removed it."

"Possible."

Sun crossed his arms. "Or they deliberately left it out."

Arthur stared at the empty space. "Why?"

Nobody answered. The mural suddenly felt much more mysterious than it had a moment ago. The five Mirrors were important enough to dominate the wall, yet one had been omitted.

Arthur stepped closer, his eyes moving across the mural, and then he noticed something tiny near the bottom, almost hidden beneath the depiction of the Earth Mirror. A small figure stood among several larger figures. It looked like a person, but there was something strange about the symbol they carried.

He leaned closer, and his King Mark suddenly became warm.

His expression changed. The tiny figure was holding a symbol that looked remarkably similar to the mark on his hand. He instinctively pulled his sleeve lower. Nobody noticed, or at least nobody said anything. The warmth faded.

He stared at the little figure. Who were you? Why were you carrying that symbol? And why did his King Mark recognize it? He didn’t have an answer, so he kept it to himself.

Athena was already carefully copying the mural. "This is one of the most important historical records we’ve found." She moved from one section to another. "I can identify several Endou symbols here."

Luna came closer. "That one represents protection." She pointed. "That one means guardian." Then she hesitated. "And that—" Her expression grew uncertain.

"What?" Athena asked.

"I don’t know." She looked at the symbol, then shook her head. "I’ve never seen it before."

Arthur glanced at the empty fifth position. The symbol Luna couldn’t identify was carved near it. He didn’t say anything.

Athena finished copying the mural. "We should keep moving."

Arthur nodded, and they left the courtyard, following the ancient street beyond it. The buried settlement continued farther than they could see, more homes, more gardens, more forgotten lives, and Arthur couldn’t help wondering how many people had once lived here, and what had happened to all of them.

The compass suddenly moved. Luna stopped. Everyone looked at her. The needle spun once, twice, then rapidly rotated in place.

She frowned. "It shouldn’t be doing that."

Arthur approached, and the compass snapped downward, the needle pointing directly toward the ground.

Everyone stared.

Sun looked at Arthur. "No."

He blinked. "What?"

Sun already knew. "I know that look."

Arthur looked down, a faint smile appearing. "We’re going lower."

Sun closed his eyes. "I was afraid you were going to say that."