As the grove behind them fades into mist, the newly revealed path winds gently downhill. The oppressive weight of the trial lifts — not entirely gone, but softened, like a bruise fading under skin.
The trees thin.
Then: a break in the canopy.
Sunlight spills across the ground in slanted beams, golden and warm. The group steps out of the forest and onto a ridge — and what they see steals their breath.
Below them stretches a vast valley, hidden from maps and memory.
Rolling fields ripple in the breeze, speckled with flowers that shimmer faintly — silver-blue petals that pulse like starlight. A river carves a path through the valley floor, its water iridescent, whispering like windchimes.
At the center of the valley, an ancient ruin rises from the earth — massive, overgrown with ivy and strange glowing moss. Towering pillars arc into the sky, broken but not fallen, surrounding a great circular dais etched with shifting runes.
Cassie steps forward, her voice barely a whisper.
"This place… it's not just hidden. It's protected."
Elara kneels at the edge of the ridge, running her fingers over a strange symbol etched into a nearby stone — a crescent locked in a ring of thorns.
"I've read about this in old texts," she murmurs. "They called it Vaelorin — the Valley of Echoes."
Revan stands still, his shadow calm around him for once.
"Echoes of what?"
Elara looks up, eyes shadowed with wonder and unease.
"Of those who came before. Of what they left behind... and why they vanished."
Signs of the Ancients
As they descend into the valley, the hum of magic grows stronger — not threatening, but watchful.
They pass ancient markers carved with symbols no one has spoken in centuries. Birds of glass and light perch silently in the trees. Statues half-sunken into the earth stare skyward, eyes blind and waiting.
And then they reach the ruin.
The circular dais pulses faintly as they approach. The runes react to their presence, lighting up in sequence — first icy blue (Cassie), then deep violet (Revan), then golden-white (Elara).
Suddenly, a ring of light rises from the stone platform, projecting a holographic constellation into the sky above them — stars shifting into alignment.
"It's a map," Cassie says, awed. "Not of the stars. Of something beneath."
Beneath the valley.
Elara's voice shakes. "The leyline core. The source."
Revan draws his blade, eyes narrowing.
"Which means we're not the only ones who'll be looking for it."
Foreshadowing – The Distant Tremor
As they begin deciphering the map, a low rumble echoes through the valley — not from the earth, but from the air. The light flickers. In the far distance, beyond the ruin's borders, a shadow moves — slow, vast, and unseen by the sun.
Cassie tenses. Elara rises to her feet. Revan turns toward the wind.
Something is waking.