Chapter 37: Beneath the Ash and Stone
Ur was chaos wrapped in silence.
Every morning, the sky shifted like the surface of disturbed oil—burning crimson, bleeding into turquoise, sometimes turning an inky black for hours without explanation. Clouds swelled, bloated with static, rumbling with soundless fury. The sun did not rise every day—and when it didn't, the predators came. Not by sight, but by vibration, scent, mana, and fear. They hunted the way smoke creeps through cracks—inevitable and silent.
Frank's outpost, codenamed Hollow Lantern, was one of dozens scattered across Ur's volatile northern hemisphere. Buried deep—five strata below the ash-crusted surface—it was encased in a shell of enchanted metal, blood-forged steel, and spell-woven quartz. The walls pulsed faintly with mana-repulsion glyphs, a net of arcane static designed to make the outpost appear invisible—or at least uninteresting—to the wandering eyes of apex predators or ancient sentient monsters.
Inside, it wasn't much better.
The air was stale. Always. Quarters were cramped, recycled air whistling faintly through vents charred from overuse. Power hummed inconsistently, sometimes dimming for hours during electrical storms—storms so fierce they could ignite stone and melt bone in seconds. The mana-reactive walls displayed shifting holograms of the surface and subsurface terrain, pulsing gently with updates: mining veins, energy patterns, movement signatures.
And red blips.
Each red blip meant a team had gone silent.
Each blink meant another name never coming back.
Frank had stopped memorizing the names after the first thirty days.
It had been ninety-seven days now.
He had changed.
His face was leaner, skin darkened by the trace particles in Ur's atmosphere. His eyes—once loud with youth—had narrowed into silent mirrors, reflecting only what mattered. Efficiency defined him now. Waste nothing—especially movement, mana, and emotion. He walked like a drawn sword: quiet, balanced, and always sharp.
His sword reflected that too.
A long, crescent blade forged from Ironsing ore, a mineral found only in a mana crystals filled with pure liquefied mana. He had taken the ore but left the crystals since it was guarded by fifth ranked beast. It pulsed faintly in his grip, etched with circular runes by a moon priest—a Sythran exile. Frank had saved him from a soul sucker he had abushed the rank 2 beast and killed it before it could react, and in return, the priest blessed his weapon with a binding charm and rare refining flame. Now, the sword didn't just cut. It sang—a soft, almost mournful hum in his hand, especially when death drew near.
Frank never asked why the priest had been exiled.
Some truths weren't worth disturbing.
On the 97th day of the third lunar cycle, it happened.
He was assigned to survey a potential new vein in Sector Red-7—an area known more for collapsing chasms and volatile mana storms than for anything usable. The land was sharp—obsidian pillars rose like black teeth from fractured ground. Static buzzed along the rocks. Something beneath the soil moved, unseen, coiling like a dream that refused to fade.
Frank crouched at the mouth of a cave, its opening barely wide enough to admit a human. He activated a drone scout, a small orb the size of a fist, and sent it inward. Its light flickered, scanning irregularly-shaped tunnels as it glided deeper.
For five seconds, the feed showed only normal cave structure.
Then everything changed.
The feed shifted.
Sky.
Open sky.
A garden.
Verdant trees bent in a gentle wind. A silver stream flowed beside crystalline spires.
And then—static.
Total blackout.
Frank froze. His body instinctively tensed, every hair on his skin alert. Not fear. Recognition.
That image—open sky inside Ur—was an impossibility.
He closed his eyes.
Stilled his breath.
Let his spatial sense expand.
The cave felt… warped. Like it was pressing back against his awareness. The space bent—not in a way that collapsed, but in a way that curled. Something was folded behind that wall. A door.
He reached out with his mana, stepped forward—and met resistance. Thin as air, hard as stone.
A spatial membrane.
He tried again, pushing into it. The pressure fought him. His body trembled—not from fatigue, but from the strain of being denied entry. Still, he didn't stop.
Each time he stepped forward, the space resonated, each attempt was wearing down a threshold. He was attuning to the spatial element. Something waited on the other side hidden.
Hours passed.
Sweat slicked his back. His legs trembled. Finally—on the fifth hour—Frank's foot met no resistance.
He stumbled forward and the pressure vanished—no crash, no flash, no wind—just sudden stillness.
And on the other side
Sky.
A real sky.
Beneath his feet, grass. Warm wind tickled his face. The air was rich with mana, thick enough to taste. He stood in a vast garden lit by two suns, where plants shimmered with unnatural colors