Neo ca back to himself in pieces.
Pain reached him first, lodged deep in his ribs like sothing jagged had been left there on purpose. Every breath scraped against it. Cold stone pressed into his back, and blood sat bitter on his tongue.
"Fuck..."
The word dragged out before he had fully opened his eyes.
He tried to push himself up and failed halfway, one arm trembling under him before the pain drove him back down. He stayed there for a mont, breathing through his teeth, until the worst of it loosened enough for him to move.
When he finally forced his head up, the first thing he saw was the blood on his shirt.
"Shit."
He dragged himself back until his shoulders hit stone, grabbed the hem of his shirt, and tore off a strip with shaking hands. Pressing it against his ribs nearly took his vision with it. White flashed across everything. He thought for one ugly second that passing out might be easier.
He pulled tighter instead.
"Co on... hold."
By the ti he tied it down, his hands were shaking badly enough that he had to brace them against his knees. He sat there breathing shallowly, jaw tight, forcing himself not to move more than necessary.
The old man on the floor. Roderic with the dagger. The forest. The Duskmane. The mountain opening behind him.
Neo shut his eyes for a second.
None of it made sense. One fact mattered more than the rest.
He was alive.
For now, that would do.
After a little while, the pounding in his skull eased enough for him to think. The bleeding had slowed. Good.
He lifted his head and finally took in the place around him.
The pain in his side lost ground to sothing colder.
The chamber was dim, lit by a faint glow with no source he could find. Not bright enough to chase the shadows away, only enough to reveal black stone, thick columns, and walls made from enormous slabs fitted together with impossible precision. Ancient lines and worn symbols had been carved into the surfaces. The air felt sealed, old, untouched.
This was no cave.
Neo stayed where he was, one hand over the bandage at his side. The mountain had not swallowed him. Sothing hidden inside it had opened.
He twisted to check behind him. No entrance remained. No crack in the stone. Nothing except black rock where the opening should have been.
The ring ca to mind at once. The heat of it against his chest. The way it had burned before the mountain moved.
’It reacted.’
He did not know how. He did not know why. He only knew the mountain had not opened at random.
Neo looked forward again, mouth tight.
This place should not have been here. Not hidden beneath a mountain this close to Zone 0. Not sealed. Not untouched.
An ancient ruin.
The thought ca with a second one close behind it.
A Godscar Ruin.
Even soone like him knew enough to understand what that ant. Places like this were not simple ruins people stumbled into and walked away from richer. They were the kind of places that changed lives, buried nas, and drew blood the mont anyone learned they existed.
For one brief instant, greed cut through the pain.
A hidden Godscar Ruin. Untouched. And he was inside it.
Reality killed that thought fast.
His ribs still throbbed. Blood still soaked the cloth around his side. Roderic was sowhere above, alive or dead. Neo had no idea how to get out, no idea what was deeper inside, and no reason to believe anything down here would welco him kindly.
’A few hours ago I was worried about food.’
Now he was bleeding inside an unexplored Godscar Ruin.
He let out a slow breath and forced himself to study the chamber properly.
He was not standing at its center. He had fallen onto an upper ledge that opened over the true structure below. The ruin descended in a vast circular formation, ring after ring of black stone dropping lower like an underground coliseum. Broad stairs curved along the inner edge. Columns rose between levels. Far above, an opening in the ceiling let pale light spill down in a narrow shaft.
His attention shifted to the walls.
Chains.
Dozens of them, maybe more, had been driven into the stone all around the circular ruin. Forged from tal darker than iron, they caught what little light there was in a way that felt wrong. Every single one descended toward the sa point at the bottom.
Neo stared.
’Screw that. What the hell is down there?’
He did not want to go lower.
Every part of the ruin told him to stay where he was and keep breathing quietly.
It solved nothing. He was trapped, injured, and alone. Waiting on the ledge like a polite idiot would only get him killed later if sothing else already lived down here.
Neo exhaled once and pushed himself upright.
Pain tore through his ribs so hard his vision tightened at the edges. He caught himself against the wall, stood there a mont, and forced his breathing back under control.
’Yeah. This is going great.’
He started down anyway.
From inside it, the ruin felt even larger. The columns looked built for things bigger than n. The chains ran beside him and above him, all of them dragging the eye toward the sa unseen center. The faint glow did nothing to make the place safer. It only made the dark beyond it feel deeper.
Godscar Ruins were rarely empty for long. Strange places drew strange things.
Which ant there was a very real chance he was not alone.
Neo kept one hand near his ribs and continued downward, step by uneven step. Sweat gathered at his temples. Food crept back into his thoughts before long, cruel and stupid and persistent.
’Amazing. Ancient ruin, broken ribs, maybe monsters, and I still get to starve underground.’
He kept descending.
After a while, the darkness below started to take shape. Sothing waited at the center. Not stone.
A figure.
The stairs opened onto a wide circle of smooth black floor. Empty, bare, set apart from the descending rings around it.
Except for the thing at its heart.
Neo slowed without aning to.
It was kneeling.
Its arms were stretched to either side, held in place by the chains from above. They ran from the walls, down through the ruin, and into that single body at the center.
’That doesn’t look very comfortable.’
The joke landed flat even in his own head.
He kept going.
Step by step, the details sharpened.
It was a man.
Or what remained of one.
A section of one forearm was missing. Part of the neck looked cut away. A piece of the abdon was gone as well. It did not look like rot, and it did not look like anything had fed on him. The damage was precise, as if parts had been removed on purpose and the rest left behind.
Neo’s expression tightened.
That was wrong enough.
What made it worse was everything that had been left intact.
The body was still kneeling. The chains still held. And even ruined like this, the thing gave off a pressure that spread through the chamber like invisible weight. Old. Alien. Wrong in a way that settled into the bones.
Neo glanced around the empty circle, half expecting soone to step out and explain whatever nightmare this was.
No one did.
His stomach growled.
The sound bounced off the black stone and ca back at him.
Neo shut his eyes for a beat.
’Of course.’
A few hours ago he had wanted food and a little money. Enough to get through the day. Enough to keep the hunger from scraping at him for one more night.
Now he was limping through a buried ruin toward a chained corpse that felt heavier than death.
’Where the hell did my luck go?’
By the ti he reached the last stretch of steps, his side was screaming and his breath had gone shallow. Pale light from above fell more clearly here, striking the center of the ruin like judgnt.
Neo stepped off the last stair.
The sound of his boot carried farther than it should have.
He froze.
Nothing changed.
The chains did not move. Nothing in the circle reacted. Only his breathing remained, and the faint scrape of tal sowhere higher up, as if the ruin were shifting in its sleep.
Neo looked up at the kneeling figure.
From here the scale of the place beca worse. Descending rings of black stone. Endless columns. That shaft of light overhead. Every line of the ruin pulled back toward the chained body at the center.
Whatever that thing was, this whole place had been built to keep it there.
Neo moved a little closer, circling with a shallow limp.
"Alright," he muttered into the vast chamber. "What exactly are you supposed to be?"
Nothing answered.
He took another step.
"Because this feels a little excessive."
He studied the ruined remains, trying to force his mind to treat them like a corpse and failing every ti.
The place had not been built around a body.
It had been built around a presence.
Neo’s mouth flattened.
His stomach growled again, louder this ti.
"Again? Really?"
When he opened his eyes, his attention dropped to the figure’s chest.
Sothing was shining there.
Neo narrowed his eyes.
He had seen Soul Cores before. Cheap ones. Low-rank ones moved in boxes for n with money and no sha. Enough to know their shape. Enough to know the feeling they usually gave off.
This was not one of those.
Even from here, it felt wrong. Not powerful in the way people bragged about. Wrong. Like sothing his body understood before his mind did.
Neo stayed where he was, breathing through the ache in his ribs.
The old man was dead. Roderic was sowhere above. He was underground, wounded, hungry, alone, and staring at the only thing in this place that looked like it might explain any of it.
Whatever this ruin was, whatever that corpse had once been, whatever had made the mountain open for him, all of it pointed back to that yellow light.
Neo let out a slow breath and forced himself forward with a wince.
"I don’t like you," he muttered under his breath, staring at the Soul Core. "But I don’t exactly have better options either."
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