Chapter 267: The Guardian’s Memory

The enormous gate stood silently before them, the Earth Mirror symbol carved into its center glowing faintly in the crystal light. Arthur stared at it. After everything they’d discovered beneath the ancient city, they’d finally reached the place the roads, roots, and compass had all been pointing toward.

Yet the gate didn’t open, not even when Arthur stepped closer. His King Mark pulsed once. Nothing happened.

Vedas looked around. "The Guardian is gone. Why isn’t the gate opening?"

Athena was already examining the stone. "There may be another mechanism."

Luna walked toward the center. "The Guardian was protecting this place. Perhaps it wasn’t meant to open for anyone."

Arthur looked at the ground where the Mirror Guardian had disappeared. Silver fragments still remained scattered across the stone. One of them suddenly moved.

He noticed. "Wait."

The fragment floated upward. Then another. Then another. Hundreds of tiny pieces of silver light rose from the ground and gathered above the plaza.

Melo’s ears perked up. "This isn’t normal."

The fragments began spinning, a faint hum filling the cavern, and Arthur’s King Mark became warm. Then—

FLASH.

The entire world changed. The underground city disappeared, and Arthur found himself standing in a completely different place. Sunlight. Real sunlight. A vast green valley stretched before them, the city they’d just explored right there, but not ruined.

Alive.

Thousands of people moved through its streets, Beasts walking beside them, children running between buildings, merchants pushing carts through crowded marketplaces.

The enormous towers were covered in banners, and the underground river ran bright and clear.

Arthur turned slowly. "This is a memory."

"Everyone was there," Athena’s voice came from beside him. They could see the vision, but none of them could interact with it.

Luna stared at the living city, her expression softening. "So this is what it looked like."

Arthur nodded, and then the scene shifted. The happiness disappeared. People were running, hundreds of them, then thousands, children being carried, families holding hands as they fled through the streets, Beasts running alongside them.

Something had happened, something terrible, but they couldn’t see what. There was only panic, a distant red glow illuminating the horizon, people looking behind them. Some screamed. Others fell. The ground trembled.

Athena’s expression turned grim. "This is the massacre."

Luna’s face went pale, and Arthur watched silently as the scene changed again. The city was burning, not with ordinary fire.

A strange darkness spread across the land, purple-black energy crawling through the streets like smoke. Wherever it touched the ground, plants withered, Beasts turned violent, people collapsed. The same kind of negative energy they’d seen in the corrupted Beasts.

Arthur’s eyes narrowed. "So that’s when it started."

"The corruption came first," Athena nodded.

The memory continued. The guardians were moving through the city, not fighting, carrying something, a massive object transported between them. Arthur recognized the shape immediately.

The Earth Mirror.

Luna stared. "They’re moving it."

The guardians carried the Mirror through a hidden passage, and Arthur watched them carefully. They weren’t simply protecting it from the corrupted Beasts. They were looking behind themselves, checking the streets, watching the people. One guardian stopped and looked toward a group of fleeing humans. Another raised his weapon.

Arthur’s expression changed. "They’re afraid of people finding it."

"Yes," Athena’s eyes narrowed.

The memory shifted again. The Earth Mirror was brought deeper underground, the guardians placing it inside a massive chamber, stone walls closing around it, ancient mechanisms activating, the Mirror disappearing beneath layers of stone. Only then did the guardians relax.

Luna looked shaken. "My grandfather said the Mirrors were always protected."

Arthur looked at her. "Maybe they were." He turned back toward the memory. "But that doesn’t mean they were always here."

Luna stared at the scene, the realization seeming to hurt. Her family’s stories hadn’t necessarily been false. They’d simply been incomplete. The Mirrors hadn’t always been hidden beneath the ancient cities. Something had forced the guardians to hide them, something that happened before the Earth Mirror was moved.

Arthur watched the fleeing people again. There were so many, hundreds, thousands, but there was something strange. They weren’t running from anything visible. People kept looking backward, yet there was nothing there. No army. No Beast. No monster. Only empty streets.

Then one of the buildings in the distance suddenly collapsed.

BOOM!

The crowd screamed. Something invisible moved through the city, the ground cracking, a wave of purple-black energy sweeping across the street.

Arthur’s eyes widened. Whatever had caused the massacre, they still hadn’t seen it. The memory refused to show it. Instead, the scene jumped forward. The city was empty, bodies gone, the streets covered in ash, the corrupted energy spread everywhere. The guardians stood around the sealed chamber containing the Earth Mirror, one of them placing a hand against the stone. A symbol appeared, the same Earth Mirror symbol carved into the gate before Arthur now.

Then the memory began fading. Arthur felt his King Mark heat up.

Pulse.

Golden light briefly spread across his palm, and he instinctively closed his hand.

Athena saw it, her eyes moving toward him, but she said nothing, quietly pulling out her notes and recording everything instead. He glanced at her. She kept writing. Good. He didn’t want to explain it.

The memory flickered one final time. A wall appeared, ancient writing covering it, the letters unfamiliar but somehow understandable to him anyway. One sentence remained brighter than the others.

"Never allow the corruption to reach the Mirror."

The words hung in the air, and then the entire memory shattered. The ancient city returned, the silver fragments dropping from the air and vanishing.

Nobody spoke. For several seconds, there was only the sound of the underground river.

Luna stared at the gate, her hands trembling. "The massacre happened first."

"And then the corruption spread," Athena nodded.

"And only afterward did they move the Earth Mirror underground."

Arthur looked toward the enormous gate. The timeline was becoming clearer, but the most important part was still missing. What had caused the massacre? What had produced the corruption? And why had the guardians been more afraid of people discovering the Mirror than the monsters spreading through the city?

He approached the gate slowly, his King Mark still warm, and placed his hand against the stone. Nothing happened. Yet for the briefest moment, he felt something on the other side. A presence. Not a Beast. Not a person. Something connected to the Mirror.

He pulled his hand away and looked at the enormous symbol. "We’re close."

Vedas stepped beside him. "To the Earth Mirror?"

"Very close," Arthur nodded.

Behind them, Luna looked once more at the ruins of the ancient city. Her ancestors had remembered the guardians. They had remembered the Mirrors. But somewhere along the way, they had forgotten why the Mirrors had been hidden.

Arthur looked at the sealed gate, and now he knew one thing for certain. The Earth Mirror hadn’t been buried because the ancient civilization simply wanted to keep it safe.

It had been buried because something had happened, something so terrible that even the guardians had decided humanity itself couldn’t be trusted with it.

And whatever that something was, the answer was still waiting somewhere beyond the gate.