Chapter 383: Translations (1)
The walls began to whisper. Not in sound, but in shape.
As the scouting party pressed deeper, torches licked across rough stone that had been etched from floor to ceiling. These weren’t murals of kings or crowns, but frantic, sprawling depictions, an entire history bleeding itself raw into the rock.
The first stretch showed the same half-dragon figures they had seen before, proud and tall, wings outstretched, cities rising around them. But the further south they marched, the less whole the figures became.
Tails severed. Wings mangled. Horns twisted back into skulls. By the third hall, the walls swarmed with imagery of scales peeling like rotten bark, of claws breaking into shards, of jaws unhinging until faces split apart entirely.
And always, always, the serpent spiral devouring itself hovered above them, watching.
The humans muttered, their voices brittle with unease. "Cursed things." "It’s watching." "Burn this place."
"Silence," the commander barked. His grip was tight on the torch, but his eyes betrayed the same dread.
Lindarion’s gaze lingered longer. The system flickered again.
[System Alert: Residual data stream active.]
[Translation—initiating.]
[Warning: Language matrix incomplete.]
Lines of fragmented words bled into his sight, overlaying the walls.
—The blood will not hold.
—The serpent devours the vessel.
—Our children turn against the sky.
—The seal must—
The text fractured into static before completing. His jaw tightened.
’A fall. Not of enemies, but of themselves.’
Ashwing shifted suddenly, claws digging into his shoulder. The little dragon hissed low, throat vibrating with a sound that made even the soldiers glance back nervously. His scales flared with faint light, each ridge glimmering pale like moonlit steel.
Nysha’s eyes narrowed. She stayed close, her shadows restless around her ankles. "Your beast feels something," she murmured.
"He feels everything," Lindarion replied coldly.
But it wasn’t untrue. Ashwing’s pulse thrummed against his own, quick, frantic, as if every carving scraped against some buried instinct in draconic blood.
The walls changed again. They were no longer mere carvings, they bled color. Faded pigments clung stubbornly to the grooves, reds and blacks, strokes of gold long dulled but still visible.
Whole panels stretched across the tunnel, illustrating wars not against other races but against themselves. Demihumans tearing wings from kin, ripping throats out with jagged jaws, devouring what they once protected.
The soldiers recoiled. One cursed loudly and spat on the ground, another pressed trembling fingers to his temple as if to ward off madness.
"They were monsters," someone whispered.
"They were kings," another shot back.
"They were abominations," a third hissed.
Lindarion silenced them with a single glance. Their words didn’t matter. What mattered was the flicker in his sight.
[System Notice: Seal signatures detected.]
[Corruption—spread confirmed.]
[Master protocol required: Access denied.]
Then, abruptly:
[Warning: Observer detected.]
His head snapped up. The torches flickered. For a moment, just a moment, he thought he saw the serpent spiral shift, as if the walls themselves breathed. But when he blinked, it was only stone again.
No one else reacted.
’So it’s only me.’
The commander’s voice cut through the tension. "Prince, this place is poison. Every step deeper twists the men. We must turn back or risk breaking them."
Lindarion regarded him with cool eyes. "If fear alone breaks them, they were already broken."
The man flinched but said no more.
Nysha’s gaze flicked toward Lindarion again, searching. She saw the shadows curling tighter around his frame, the faint gleam in his eyes. She said nothing, but suspicion lingered.
They pressed on.
The tunnel opened into a wider chamber. The ceiling soared, cracked and half-collapsed, with stone pillars carved into the likeness of scaled guardians. The walls here weren’t just carved, they were written, scrawled with symbols no human tongue could form. Spirals nested within spirals, jagged marks cutting through them like wounds.
Ashwing leapt from Lindarion’s shoulder, landing on the cold stone floor. His lizard form rippled, scales flexing as his body grew larger, wings half-forming before collapsing back into his smaller shell. He hissed at the walls, tail lashing violently.
The soldiers stumbled back, some raising weapons instinctively.
"Hold," Lindarion ordered, his voice sharp enough to cut steel. Ashwing’s form steadied, though the fury didn’t leave his eyes.
Nysha whispered, "He knows this place."
Lindarion didn’t answer. His gaze had locked on one section of the wall, where the spirals broke into jagged streaks. The system flickered violently.
[System Override: ██ ███ ███]
[Bloodline cross-reference: Draconic—Present.]
[Keyholder anomaly detected.]
[Quest Unlocked: —██]
Static swallowed the rest.
The glow in his eyes deepened for an instant before he forced it down again. No one could know. Not Nysha. Not the humans.
The commander’s voice trembled, but he steadied it with effort. "Prince. There is nothing here but madness. Let us leave."
The soldiers murmured assent, eager to flee.
Lindarion’s hand brushed the hilt of his sword. His chest throbbed with the urge to carve deeper, to uncover what the system clawed to reveal. But no, already the humans’ faith clung too tightly. Already they whispered "savior" like a prayer. If he faltered here, if he dragged them further into ruin, they would shatter.
He turned at last. "We move south."
Relief rippled through the men. They hurried to obey, torches lifting as they left the chamber behind.
Nysha lingered again, her crimson gaze steady on him. "You saw something."
Lindarion met her eyes, cold and unreadable. "I saw walls. Nothing more."
She didn’t believe him. But she followed.
Ashwing returned to his shoulder, still tense, his claws sharper than before.
The ruined village receded into shadow as they marched on. The whispers of stone faded, though not from Lindarion’s mind.
[System Notice: Observation incomplete.]
[Data corruption—escalating.]
[Warning: Future convergence imminent.]
He ignored the flicker. His grip tightened on the sword.
The humans marched south with renewed hope that they had escaped some ancient evil. They never saw how close it had followed them.
Only Lindarion knew.
Only Lindarion always would.
—
The descent into silence was complete.
For hours they had marched through half-collapsed tunnels, the torchlight bouncing off rubble and walls that had long since given way to decay. The air reeked of mildew and ash, the ghosts of fire and rot that clung to the stone.
Yet here, at the lip of the next cavern, the stench faded. The air cooled, thinning until it felt almost sharp against the lungs, touched by something cleaner, older.
The cavern did not open into rubble, but into form.