Ren didn't like the air down here.
Too thick. Too still. Like someone had pressed pause on the world.
His boots crunched over scattered debris—shattered mana lenses, broken rune stones, cracked pieces of armor. Not all of it ancient. Some of it looked recent.
Gloop peeked out of his satchel and made a soft bloop.
Ren glanced down. "I know, buddy. This place is off."
They were walking deeper into the ruin now, through a low tunnel slick with condensation and glowing faintly blue. The walls pulsed—not with life, but memory. This ruin had seen something terrible.
"Let's just grab whatever's valuable and get out. I'm not trying to become ghost soup."
Gloop blinked in confusion.
"Ghost. Soup. You know—when the dungeon wins."
The blob drooped slightly. Ren felt that.
They reached a circular chamber lit from above by a broken skylight. A twisted metal frame arced across the ceiling like the skeleton of some buried beast. At the center of the room sat a crystal pod, humming softly, encased in an unstable cage of collapsing mana.
Ren approached cautiously. "That's either priceless… or a booby trap built by a sadistic squirrel."
He reached toward the pod.
The moment his fingers touched the edge—
the room screamed.
A pulse of air slammed outward from the walls. Runes along the floor snapped awake in a spinning cyclone. The tunnel behind them sealed shut with a hiss.
And the pod shattered.
"Of course it shattered," Ren muttered, stumbling back.
But instead of exploding, the crystal released a slow, creeping wave of… silence.
Not just quiet.
Silence. A stillness so deep it devoured the sound of Ren's breathing. Even Gloop's usual bloops cut off like someone pressed mute.
Then the tunnel began to eat itself.
The walls shimmered, bent, and folded inward—space curling like paper in a fire.
Ren grabbed Gloop. "Not good not good not good!"
He ran.
The passageway warped ahead of him, reshaping and shifting like it didn't want him to leave. Runes crawled across the walls in reverse, like time was moving backward.
Gloop's body flared with bright blue mana. It stretched itself thin like a glider and latched to the walls, forming a protective screen.
Fwshhhhhh—
A wave of collapsing space rushed toward them, faster than thought.
"Do something!" Ren shouted.
Gloop glowed—then swallowed a chunk of the collapsing mana.
Swallowed it whole.
The tunnel spasmed.
Time hiccupped.
Ren blinked—and suddenly, they were outside. Sprawled in the jungle clearing at the edge of the ruin. The entrance behind them shimmered, sparked… then imploded in a burst of blue static.
He lay there panting, Gloop melted like a pancake on his chest.
"What… was that?"
Gloop let out a small, exhausted bloop and turned into a squishy thumbs-up.
Ren groaned and laughed all at once. "Okay. You are useful. I'm keeping you forever now."
The jungle around them buzzed with distant mana life.
The ruin was gone. Sealed shut like it never existed.
Ren sat up slowly, brushing dirt from his cloak.
Whatever was in that ruin, whatever that pod was meant to contain—it was connected to something far bigger than just Cindale.
And for the first time, Ren felt it:
The worlds weren't just waiting for him.
They were watching.