Hidden, unreachable, impossible for those trapped within to tamper with. So tightly sealed that no prisoner could force their way out, no matter how desperate they were.
Her throat tightened. Why here? Why like this?
The door creaked open, protesting with the groan of wood untouched for years. A wave of dust broke free, spilling into the air in thick, choking clouds.
"Cough—cough—cough!" Kaya doubled over, hand pressed to her mouth. The taste of stale, forgotten years coated her tongue.
Inside, shadows swallowed the room whole, broken only by pale shafts of light that filtered through cracks in the wood. Every surface was smothered with a blanket of dust. Cobwebs stretched from corner to corner like brittle threads of ti itself.
A house, yes. But one abandoned. Forgotten.
The dust clung to her throat and lashes, but Kaya’s gaze didn’t waver. She blinked past the haze, and when the room ca into focus, her breath caught.
If Veer’s house had been a curious mix of ancient and modern, this place was sothing else entirely. It wasn’t just influence. It was design. Soone who ca from the modern world had built this—there was no mistaking it.
From the outside, it looked like nothing more than a cave with a heavy wooden door. But the inside told a different story. The lock itself had been engineered so precisely that not a sliver of space remained for anyone to pry through. No cracks, no gaps, no "basent-like" roughness. It was airtight. Purposeful.
And then, as her eyes road further inside, the pieces began to stack against her sense of logic.
On the far wall—she froze. A slab. Smooth, flat, rectangular. A kitchen slab. Not stone hacked together like the beast tribes used, but sleek, deliberately placed—exactly the kind humans used in open kitchens that overlooked living rooms.
Her gaze slid to the side: a long table with chairs tucked neatly beneath it. Wooden chairs. A wooden table. She almost laughed. Not stone. Not crude. Wood.
Her eyes darted again—there, a sofa set. Not a hard slab of rock cushioned with furs like she’d seen in the wolf tribe or the other tribe houses. No. An actual sofa. Fashioned entirely from wood, its structure sharp and modern.
Even the cupboards—rows of them against the wall—were wood. Not carved stone, not woven reed, but crafted, fitted woodwork. Cupboards, wardrobes... as if soone had transplanted a piece of a ho from her world into this hidden cavern.
Kaya stepped further in, the crunch of dust beneath her boots echoing. Her neck craned upward—
—and she stilled.
The roof.
She had expected jagged cave stone, the natural unevenness of rock. But instead, neat wooden planks stretched across her head, seamless, flat, deliberate. Supported by tall pillars that rose like sentinels into the ceiling. The entire cavern had been remade. Smoothed. Tad.
A cave that wasn’t a cave.
A ho that shouldn’t exist here.
Her chest tightened as the weight of it sank in. Soone had gone to great lengths to erase the wildness of the mountain, to carve out a piece of civilization where there should have been none.
And the strangest part?
Every piece of it whispered modern. Every inch of it belonged to her world—
and not this one.
As Kaya’s eyes swept across the room, her steps slow and deliberate, she noticed the dust again. Thick. Heavy. Too settled to be months—this place had been closed for years, maybe decades. Ti itself had layered down in fine grey sheets across every surface.
Before she could linger, Veer’s brother appeared beside her, carrying a thick square box. At first glance, it looked like a simple cardboard storage box—but the weight of it was wood, cut and fitted to mimic sothing far too modern for this world.
He set it on the nearby table with a dull thunk.
"Wait a minute," he muttered. "I’ll open the window."
Kaya turned as he moved to the far wall. Her brows knit the mont the light poured in.
Not a slit. Not a crude vent, or the usual tiny cut-outs beastn called windows. No. This was a full-length ceiling-to-floor window—broad, open, deliberate. The kind she had seen in penthouses and modern high-rises. The only difference was the material: not glass, but wood. Wooden shutters folded outward, and beyond them, a grid of wooden slats shaped like a cage, barring birds or beasts from slipping inside.
Her stomach lurched. This wasn’t coincidence anymore.
She brushed dust off the edge of the sofa—its shape eerily familiar to the living rooms she’d known—and lowered herself into it. The cushions groaned faintly under her, worn but intact. Her gaze drifted back to the box.
Sothing tugged at her chest as she reached out. Slowly, carefully, she lifted the lid.
Inside lay a few scattered objects dulled by ti—but one caught her eye instantly.
A thick journal. A diary. Its cover still firm despite the dust, the letters pressed into it glinting faintly gold.
Her breath stilled.
Earthcon.
She knew that na. She rembered the headlines. Earthcon—the architectural giant in her world, a company fad for pushing designs to impossible limits. They built hos that were fireproof, impact-resistant, able to withstand even bombings and missiles. Their projects had dominated every news channel just before she vanished from her world.
Her fingers trembled as they hovered over the letters.
This was no mistake. No imitation.
This diary did not belong to this world.
Soone had brought Earthcon here.
Instead of reaching for the diary, Kaya’s curiosity pulled her deeper. Her hand brushed past it and landed on the other items tucked inside the wooden box. Four—no, five—bundles of hide cloth, each tightly rolled and bound with thin leather straps.
She pulled one free. The weight of it was uneven, thick, as though the hide carried more than just age. With careful fingers, she untied the strap and spread the cloth open across the dusty table.
Her breath hitched.
Drawings.
Not crude sketches. Not tribal marks.
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