Saying it out loud didn't make it any easier to believe.

Jay blinked. "…The First—wait. The First Hero? The one from all the Deimos murals? The one folk tale I used to listen to?"

Ryn nodded once, throat tight.

He didn't know the Hero's name. Or anything at all really, only that Deimos had revered him, and that he was the one to unite the humans against threats unknown to mankind.

Jay flapped his arms weakly. "Okay. Cool. Why is he—"

He waved frantically at the frozen wasteland around them.

"—here?

Ryn didn't have an answer.

Jay circled behind it…and stopped.

"…Ryn?"

Ryn turned.

Jay was pointing past the statue, his face a mixture of awe and terror.

"What," Ryn asked slowly, "is that?"

Beyond the Hero's frozen likeness, the storm of ice finally eased up, revealing a massive silhouette.

Gigantic walls made of dark stone, collapsed battlements, and a frozen banner ripping weakly in the wind.

An entire fortress…abandoned, and somehow still standing against the ravages of centuries.

Ryn's eyes widened.

Jay's jaw dropped. "That's… that's a whole fortress. On this. How?!"

He didn't answer.

Because the answer was obvious.

Castles weren't built on islands like this. They needed foundations, soil, entire support structures. Not… suspended landmasses drifting above the world.

He walked closer to the crumbling wall, brushing away frost with his glove. The stone underneath wasn't shaped to the terrain.

It didn't belong here.

Jay squinted. "…Wait. Did someone… move this?"

Ryn let out a slow breath.

"Looks like it."

Jay turned in a circle, eyes darting to the floating fragments visible through the thinning storm—pieces of cliffs, chopped hillsides, shards of earth suspended in the sky.

"…Ryn. Tell me this place isn't stitched together out of stolen land."

Ryn didn't.

"This wasn't built," he murmured. "It was taken."

Jay threw his arms up. "Why?! Who does that?!"

"Dunno, we'll find out." Ryn answered, making his way toward the entrance.

The portcullis hung crooked, half-frozen, half-collapsed. Ryn ducked under it, stepping into a wide entry hall dusted with frost.

The inside was just as he expected, mostly collapsed as debris laid everywhere along the floors. The interior itself was nicely decorated, well, it was before all this wreckage.

The entry hall opened into a long corridor lined with tall, frost-clouded windows.

Golden arches stretched overhead, ribs of stone curving like the bones of some ancient beast. Each step they took echoed on the slated tiles.

Jay's breath fogged as he stared around. "Okay… wow. This is… nicer than I expected."

Ryn ran a glove along one of the pillars. The stone was smooth beneath the frost. It was smooth and polished, once.

The fortress itself didn't look like one used for war. It looked more like a sanctuary, the structure not too unfamiliar in Ryn's memories, as he did die in one after all.

Snow padded in behind them, paws silent on the stone. The tiger's white fur glowed faintly under the filtered light from the windowpanes.

He looked down the hall toward a set of massive wooden doors at the far end, their iron rings frosted over.

"Let's check there," Ryn said.

Jay swallowed. "Because of course the ominous doors are calling to you."

Ryn's boots clicked softly across the stone as he crossed the corridor and pushed open the great doors.

Cold air rushed out, stale and heavy.

A throne room stretched before him.

Columns of tall pillars lined the walls like sentinels. Tattered banners, once regal, now faded to colorless shreds.

A grand skylight loomed overhead, shattered, as snowflakes fell through in thin, drifting sheets.

Jay stepped in behind him and immediately stopped.

"…Ryn."

At the far end of the room, slumped on a raised dais, sat a king.

Or what remained of one.

A skeleton, still draped in the remnants of royal armor, leaned against a massive stone throne. The armor was ornate, heroic even, but cracked down the center. Frost clung to the empty eye sockets.

Both hands gripped a longsword buried tip-first into the floor, the blade frozen in place as though sealing something beneath.

It looked like a boss fight waiting to happen.

Jay inhaled sharply. "Oh no. Nope. This is the part where it stands up and kills us."

Ryn didn't move.

The king wasn't posed like a guardian nor a sentinel, but more like a ruler, waiting for something or someone that never came.

Jay hissed,

"Why are you walking toward it?! Ryn, EVERYONE knows you don't walk toward the corpse with a sword! That's Adventuring Rule Number One!"

But Ryn wasn't looking at the corpse.

He was looking at the floor.

There was a faint circular carving around the sword's tip, almost invisible under centuries of frost.

He knelt and brushed the ice aside. Beneath it, a shallow groove revealed itself, etched into stone like part of a locking mechanism.

He studied the groove, then the angle of the sword. The blade wasn't straight—it leaned slightly, as if frozen mid-motion.

Ryn placed both hands on the hilt and carefully tilted the sword, rotating it along the curve of the groove.

Nothing happened.

Jay squeezed his eyes shut. "Okay, that was it. That was the warning move."

Ryn adjusted again, slower this time. He felt it then.

A faint click.

The sword slid a fraction of an inch and settled perfectly into place.

The throne room shuddered.

Jay yelped and latched onto a pillar. "I KNEW IT—"

Stone groaned.

Not the corpse.

The throne.

With a deep, grinding rumble, the massive chair began to shift sideways, dragging the skeletal king with it as one piece. Dust and frost cascaded down as the throne slid into a hidden recess in the wall.

Behind it—

Darkness.

A wide stone passage sloped downward, lined with ancient steps untouched by snow.

Cold air poured up from below. Not the biting wind of the Isles, but a sealed, preserved chill, like a place that had been waiting to be opened.

Jay stared, mouth hanging open.

"…So," he said weakly, "it wasn't a boss fight."

"No," Ryn said.

"It was a door."

The corpse never moved.

The sword remained locked in its groove.

The throne finished sliding aside with a final, echoing thud. Ryn looked down into the passage.

"This," he said quietly, "is the real entrance."

Jay groaned. "Do we really have to do this?"

Ryn didn't answer; his feet were already moving on their own. Down the steps and into the abyss.

The passage narrowed almost immediately, the ceiling lowering and the walls pressing closer together.

Snow padded after them, then stopped.

Its massive shoulders brushed the stone. The tiger huffed, ears flattening as it tried to squeeze forward, claws scraping uselessly against the floor.

Jay glanced back. "…Uh. That's not gonna work."

Ryn turned. The corridor ahead grew tighter, the stone clean-cut and deliberate.

"Stay here," he started—

Snow shook its head.

Before either of them could react, its body dissolved into drifting cold mist. The frost settled into shape in Ryn's hand, a blade.

The sword was long and straight, its blade broad near the hilt before tapering into a sharp, angled point. The guard was compact and asymmetrical, shaped less for flair and more for catching or redirecting blows.

The grip was wrapped in something pale and rough to the touch.

White fur.

Snow's presence lingered there, steady and calm.

Ryn's grip tightened slightly. He'd seen weapons like this before.

Magnus. He called it a Pact Armament.

When powerful and intelligent creatures form a pact, they can reshape their Essence, sometimes even into weapons.

Ryn hadn't expected Snow to be able to do so, yet here it was, humming softly in his hands.

Jay looked like he was going to flip, but realized it's just another day for Ryn, so he kept his mouth shut.

Ryn attached the sword to his waist-strap. Putting Snow into his Dimensional Ring was probably not a good idea.

Together, the three of them descended into the abyss, quite literally, as the only source of light they had was Jay's manalite lantern.

Their footsteps echoed softly, swallowed after only a few paces. The passage widened again, the stone smoothing beneath their boots, the walls curving with deliberate symmetry.

Jay slowed. "Ryn… do you feel that?"

"Yeah," Ryn said.

The lantern light spilled forward…and stopped.

They had reached the end of the passage.

A massive door loomed before them, set seamlessly into the stone. It wasn't made of wood or metal, but a single slab of dark stone, smooth and unbroken.

Ryn stepped closer, placing a hand against the cold surface.

The stone doors shuddered, then, as if being pushed by an invisible force, they opened slowly.

Dust fell from the ceiling as the stone dragged on the floor.

Ryn was about to step forward, until he heard it.

A deep, guttural roar rolled through the chamber, reverberating through the stone like a pressure wave.

It was a territorial warning. Something had been sealed here.

And it had just realized the seal was broken…

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