The pre-System ruins loomed before them, a fractured monument to forgotten technologies and lost civilizations. The jagged edges of the once-grand archway reached toward the sky like desperate fingers, their surfaces etched with symbols that seemed to shift and dance when caught in the corner of one’s eye. Beyond the threshold, darkness breathed—a living entity that pulsed with the whispers of ancient machinery slumbering in eternal half-death, waiting for a touch to reawaken what time had nearly erased.

  Alor stood at the threshold, his pink hair caught what little sunlight that filtered through the cloud-draped sky. His sturdy frame cast a long shadow across the cracked stone floor as he raised his lantern, its glow illuminating a narrow corridor that stretched into darkness.

  “The readings get stronger from here,” Alor said, his accent melodic despite their situation. “But the structure is not stable, so watch your step, yes?”

  Cyrus nodded, along with the others. The archway fascinated him. Something about this place tugged at the edges of his mind—not quite memory, but a recognition deeper than conscious thought. His fingers twitched at his side, dancing on invisible currents that only he could sense.

  Maija stepped forward, her platinum hair gleaming like polished silver in the lantern light. “Standard formation. Alor in the lead. Matti and I a dozen steps behind him, and then Cassandra and Cyrus bring up the rear.” Her eyes, sharp as cut crystal, swept over the group. “No unnecessary risks, no wandering off. Do not get distracted by treasure. We’re here for Lyessa.”

  The weight of countless expeditions resonated in Maija’s words—of dangers faced, trials overcome, and the discipline and caution born of those experiences.

  Cassandra made a few last minute adjustments to her robes, then rested her hand on the hilt of Galatine. Cyrus, not for the last time, wondered if he should have asked for armor of his own. It was probably too late to bring up such things.

  “Let’s proceed,” Maija said with, at least momentarily, calm authority.

  They stepped through the archway in practiced formation. The transition from daylight to the dim interior marked more than just a physical threshold. It was as if they had stepped across a bubble, and inside it, the System's rules seemed spent, like a bandage falling off and exposing a wound mere minutes after being put on.

  Alor’s lantern swept across walls where metal and stone merged in an unnatural union. Conduits, rusted to the color of dried blood, snaked through the ancient stone like veins in a decaying body. Fading carvings depicted scenes that shifted between technological schemata and ritualistic symbolism depending upon how the light caught them.

  “Fascinating,” the dwarf murmured. His miner’s eyes cataloged material engineering and architectural style with professional precision. “These conduits—they’re made of an alloy I’ve never seen. Not copper, not silver, but somewhere… between.”

  Matti’s heavy boots left distinct prints in the fine dust covering the floor. The tall man ducked his head beneath a fallen support beam, his muscular frame seeming almost incongruous in the delicate ruins. “There is a pattern to the decay,” Matti observed. He ran his fingers along a relatively intact section of the wall.

  “Some of this preservation seems… intentional.” Matti speculated, even while a wave of light flowed over his hand. He stared at the replica of the metal, then let his hand return to flesh, as if his curiosity had been sated.

  A distant sound forced them all to tense. Metal settling against metal, perhaps. Her hand hovered near her kit of healing implements, ready to address whatever might manifest. “Keep moving, and stay alert,” she instructed, her voice barely above a whisper.

  Cyrus walked with Cassandra, bringing up the rear. Alor was ahead enough that following in his precise footsteps was impossible for Cyrus or Cassandra, but he made his best effort to step where Maija had in front of him. Maybe he was being overly cautious, but he didn’t want to fuck things up when his new friends seemed to be competent.

  The corridor narrowed, and they were forced to go single file. Ancient debris crunched beneath their boots—fragments of technology so advanced it might as well have been magic, reduced to unrecognizable shards. A metal panel caught his eye—its surface less corroded than its surroundings, geometric patterns etched into it with mathematical precision.

  Before Cyrus realized what happened, his index finger tapped against it. The contact sent a shiver through his arm, a resonance that wasn’t physical but mental. Not immediately, anyway. A small discharge of electricity pulsed from the panel, shocking his finger with unexpected viciousness.

  “Fuck,” Cyrus whispered under his breath, nursing his finger.

  The response was immediate and electric. Embedded lights, previously invisible beneath layers of grime, flickered to life along the corridor, not in sequence but in chaotic pulses that seemed to follow the rhythm of Cyrus’s heartbeat. Blue-white illumination raced through the conduits, momentarily brightening the passage before it settled into an erratic pattern, like the last gasping breaths of a dying creature.

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  “What did you do?” Maija’s voice cut through the sudden silence that followed. Her anxiety spiked so sharply, so highly, that Cyrus could feel the ache of her anxiety in his stomach.

  Cyrus stared at the finger that had betrayed him, then at the panel.

  “I… don’t know? I just touched it. I couldn’t stop myself.”

  Cassandra stepped closer, which meant invading his personal space. She studied Cyrus and the panel. The flickering lights cast her severe features in stark relief, transforming her face into a living sculpture of light and shadows. She reached past him and touched the panel herself.

  Nothing happened.

  “It responded specifically to you,” Cassandra observed, but her neutral tone belied her piercing gaze. “Lyessa and I have fully explored these ruins. Nothing here has ever reacted like this.”

  From the front of the line, Alor’s excitement broke through the tension. His pink hair seemed to bristle with curiosity, and excitement. “Magnificent! The dungeon recognized him somehow. Perhaps his memories are here, yes?”

  The dwarf’s lantern became redundant as more lights activated further down the narrow corridor, inviting them deeper. The illumination revealed previously hidden details—script-like symbols etched into the ceiling, following the path of the conduits in intricate patterns.

  Matti set a reassuring hand on Maija’s shoulder. “If it had wanted to harm us, it would have done so already,” he reasoned. Yet his eyes remained alert. “This felt more like… recognition.”

  Cyrus flexed his fingers. The sensation of connection lingered like static electricity across his skin. The missing pieces of his past hovered just beyond reach, tantalizing in their proximity but utterly obscured and hidden.

  “It felt familiar,” Cyrus admitted quietly. “Not this place, but the feel, the vibe, of it.”

  “Do you require healing, or shall we just assume that was your divine retribution for touching things you shouldn’t have?” Maija asked him.

  “Uh, I’m good,” Cyrus responded. He didn’t like the way her eyes narrowed when she asked that. Alor had a genuine fear of the woman, and it had infected Cyrus slightly. Why was Alor so afraid of her though? She wasn’t that imposing, and her powers seemed to revolve around fixing things. Neither were terrifying prospects.

  They continued forward, the passage gradually widening into a hall flanked by moss-covered statues. Unlike the organic growth elsewhere in the ruins, this moss pulsed faintly with bioluminescence, casting an ethereal glow across the stone guardians. The statues themselves defied easy categorization—part humanoid, part mechanical, their expressions frozen somewhere between transcendence and terror.

  Broken circuitry littered the floor, crushed beneath countless years of fallen debris. Yet in places, active connections still sparked and whispered, responding to their presence—or perhaps specifically to Cyrus’s—with faint electric murmurs.

  “The architecture changed here,” Cassandra noted. Her green eyes flicked up and down the hall. “These statues weren’t built with the rest of the structure. They were added later. Much later.”

  “Different materials, different craftsmanship. Someone came after the original builders, repurposing the space.” Alor nodded in agreement, his expert gaze confirming her assessment.

  Maija knelt to examine a fragment of broken technology, her expression cautious. “These components match descriptions of Machina artifacts we’ve encountered before.” She rose, brushing dust away from her knees in annoyance. “We should proceed with caution and the expectation of Machina.”

  A chill settled over the group at the mention of the Machina. Cyrus felt the air grow heavier, charged with the weight of unseen observation. The lights along the corridor pulsed rapidly in response to his heightened awareness.

  “Keep close, and fingers on your triggers,” Alor commanded in a low tone, his accent thickening with tension, his phrasing ignoring the fact no one else used a triggered weapon. “Many ancient places have defense systems that outlasted their makers.”

  They moved past the silent sentinels, each statue’s gaze seeming to follow their progress despite empty eye sockets filled with nothing but shadow and time. The rhythmic clank of Matti’s heavy boots on stone punctuated the silent tension, a metronomic reminder of their mortal intrusion into a timeless place.

  Cyrus paused briefly at the last statue, struck by its posture—unlike the others, it knelt, hands outstretched in supplication or warning. Its face, half-obscured by mechanical components, expressed profound revelation. Even without touching it, he could feel a resonance similar to what he experienced with the panel.

  “What do you think they were worshipping?” he asked quietly, glancing at Cassandra.

  She considered the statue, all while stroking Galatine’s hilt. “Must it be worshipping? Perhaps they were becoming,” Cassandra suggested. “The Encoded are but pieces of the greater whole that is Machina, a blight of techno-organic technology and flesh merged into one. We casually throw the term Machina around, but if we are to be precise, only their machine Goddess is Machina, and the rest are The Encoded.”

  Her words hung in the air, pregnant with implication as they continued their descent into the heart of the ruins. The corridor sloped gently downward, leading them deeper beneath the surface. With each step, the technological elements grew more pronounced, the architecture less concerned with aesthetic beauty and more with functional purpose.

  Ahead, a soft hum grew gradually louder—not mechanical exactly, but harmonic, like the resonance of a crystal under sustained pressure. The lights that awoke at Cyrus’s touch grew more stable, less erratic, as if gathering strength from his continued presence.

  “We are approaching something significant,” Alor announced. His eyes glowed with the use of his abilities. “The energy signatures are concentrated ahead.”

  “Define significant,” Maija snapped.

  Alor shrugged his shoulder.

  “More powerful than you, less powerful than a sun?” Alor answered.

  “I hate you,” Maija hissed at the dwarf.

  The corridor widened suddenly, opening into what could only have been a central chamber. Matti’s boots made one final, resonant step before they fell silent when the team crossed the threshold into a new space, where time, sound, and physics themselves seemed to follow a different set of rules than the dungeon so far.

  They had barely journeyed into the dungeon, but Cyrus already felt a weight settled against his consciousness. Not a memory, exactly, but the shadow of knowledge, a hole in his mind that gave possible clues at what might have once occupied the void. Somewhere, a light waited to illuminate that darkness.