One girl knelt near the water’s edge, dipping her fingers into the cool stream to catch her breath.
“I think… I think this area is safe. The water is clear.”
Her companion frowned, studying the riverbed nervously.
“Wait… look at the reflection. Something’s wrong….”
Before he could finish his warning, the water exploded upward in a fountain of spray.
A colossal, reptilian jaw lined with rows of armored scales snapped violently shut right over the spot where the girl had been kneeling.
She barely managed to roll backward onto the gravel, her clothes drenched, her face ghostly pale as the river instantly turned a dark, murky crimson.
“…It’s not safe,” her companion whispered weakly, backing away from the thrashing water.
“Nothing here is safe…”
Deep within the uncharted core of the Forgotten Realm…
An elderly man slowly opened his long-closed eyes.
He sat cross-legged atop the ancient stone ruins of a collapsed spire that had been entirely swallowed by centuries of massive, glowing vines.
His snowy white beard reached all the way to the weathered stone floor, and his dark, archaic robes were faded beyond recognition.
Beside his knee rested an ancient, gnarled wooden staff covered in faint, deep cracks.
He slowly turned his head, his cloudy eyes looking toward the distant, shattered violet sky where the new candidates were wandering.
“…Interesting,” he rasped, his voice sounding like dry leaves scraping across stone.
The corners of his thin, weathered lips lifted into a faint, ancient smile.
“So many lively children…” he whispered to the empty air.
“…after all these long, silent years.”
He quietly closed his eyes once more, his breathing becoming so shallow he seemed part of the stone itself.
Waiting.
Watching.
Expecting
Back near the center of the realm…
The chief examiner and the remaining senior instructors had established a temporary defensive perimeter around the ruined train platform.
Several instructors were continuously attempting to channel their high-tier mana into complex communication and teleportation arrays laid out on the stone flagstones.
Every single attempt ended in a harsh, violent burst of sparks.
One instructor slammed his fist against a shattered array stone in pure frustration.
“Damn it all! The spatial anchor isn’t just blocked.. it’s been completely rewritten! We are isolated!”
The chief examiner stood near the edge of the cliff, silent and motionless.
His eyes were fixed on the dark, ominous horizon line where black storm clouds were beginning to gather.
A senior instructor approached him, her voice low and tight.
“Sir… if an emergency rescue force from the main spire cannot breach the barrier from the outside…” Find the original chapter at g.com.
She swallowed hard before finishing the thought.
“…what is our official directive?”
The old chief examiner remained silent for a long moment, the wind whipping his gray robes.
Finally, he answered, his voice devoid of its former authority, leaving only raw reality.
“We survive first.”
It was the exact same directive he had given to the terrified students hours ago.
Only now… he was saying it to himself.
Far away from the mounting chaos of the surface…
Deep inside the hidden cavern…
Three solitary figures continued walking through the pitch-black darkness.
None of them noticed the thousands of tiny, golden-eyed ants quietly watching their progress from deep cracks within the stone walls.
Nor did they notice that the deeper they walked into the earth… the rough, natural cave walls were slowly, subtly changing.
The jagged, random stone was smoothing out, taking on precise, deliberate angles.
It was almost… as though the tunnel had been carved eons ago by intelligent hands.
And somewhere far ahead in the gloom… a faint, warm light flickered softly in the darkness.
The deeper the three of them ventured into the winding subterranean passage, the less it resembled a natural cave.
“What do you think made a place like this?” Mira whispered, her soft voice echoing against the dark stone walls.
Mason paused, running his calloused fingers across the surface beside him.
“…Well, it’s definitely not natural. The angles are too precise.”
Lyra leaned in, inspecting the stone closely.
He was right.
The jagged, rough edges of the cave had given way to unnaturally smooth slate.
Faded geometric lines and shallow, rhythmic engravings decorated parts of the wall, almost entirely worn away by the passage of uncounted centuries.
Ahead of them, the living black stream of ants continued marching along the edge of the corridor without a single second of hesitation.
“They’re still leading us,” Lyra noted softly.
“They know where they are going” Myrmor replied as a matter of fact.
‘Or… they know where they came from?’
Lyra mused internally.
“…I should’ve known,” Lyra muttered under her breath, a faint, exasperated smile touching her lips.
Mira glanced back at her, raising an eyebrow.
“Hm? Did you say something, Lyra?”
“Nothing,” Lyra replied with a small shake of her head.
“Just talking to myself.”
After another ten minutes of navigating the descending path, a faint, golden illumination began to bleed into the dark tunnel ahead.
“It surely isn’t sunlight,” Mason observed, his hand tightening around the leather grip of his greatsword.
“The mana frequency is.. stagnant.”
“No,” Lyra agreed, feeling a strange, resonant pulse against her collarbone.
“It feels… Different, odd and at the same time natural.”
The narrow stone tunnel widened rapidly,
Then, quite suddenly..
The corridor opened up into an enormous, breath taking underground chamber.
The three of them instantly stopped in their tracks, their eyes widening in utter disbelief.
“…Whoa,” Mira breathed out, her short bow slipping slightly in her hand.
The chamber was unlike anything any of them had ever seen or read about in their academy textbooks.
Rows upon rows of ancient, hand-carved stone desks stood neatly arranged across the vast, vaulted hall.
Though covered in a thick layer of centuries-old dust, they remained perfectly aligned in parallel lines, all facing toward the far end of the room.
At the very front of the grand hall stood a raised stone platform.
Upon it rested an elevated master desk, and behind it… an enormous black stone wall stretched almost all the way to the vaulted ceiling.
“It…” Lyra whispered, her voice filled with awe.
“…It’s a classroom.”
Mason slowly nodded, taking in the sheer scale of the architecture.
“It was. A massive one at that.”
Dust particles floated lazily through the ambient golden light.
Fragments of broken white chalk still rested on the edge of the master podium.
Several stone chairs near the front had toppled over, but most remained perfectly upright, as though their former occupants had simply stood up one afternoon… and never returned.
Mira slowly walked down the center aisle, her boots leaving distinct footprints in the heavy dust.
“I’ve never seen a classroom this big. My old Academy’s main lecture hall isn’t even half this size.”
“It must have taught hundreds of students at a time,” Lyra murmured, scanning the endless rows.
“Or beings,” Myrmor quietly corrected inside her mind.