Drake ran as if death itself was breathing down his neck.
Branches lashed across his face and arms as he forced his way through the forest, leaving thin red lines across his skin.
His boots slipped over damp soil, crushed leaves, and exposed roots, but he did not slow down.
He could not.
Every breath tore through his throat like broken glass, and every beat of his heart hammered against his ribs with painful force.
Behind him, voices echoed between the trees.
“Don’t let him escape!” “He went this way!” “Young Master Leon wants him dragged back alive!” Drake’s jaw clenched at the name.
Leon Valerius.
A young master of House Valerius, one of the many noble families that ruled over the modern world from behind walls of wealth, bloodline, and awakened power.
In another age, nations had belonged to presidents, kings, and ministers.
Now, true authority rested in the hands of those who controlled mana.
The world had changed long ago.
Dungeons had appeared without warning across the earth, opening like wounds in reality.
From them came monsters, relics, ores, herbs, ancient knowledge, and death.
Humanity survived only because some people began to awaken.
Hunters, Magicians, Cultivators, Knights, Priests, Alchemists, Summoners—the names differed, but they all shared one thing in common.
Power.
Those with power rose above the rest.
Those without it learned to lower their heads.
The Guilds controlled dungeons, monster resources, and the global economy.
The Noble Families controlled territory, bloodline techniques, and political influence.
Between them, they held the world in their palms.
Ordinary people like Drake lived beneath their shadows, surviving on scraps and hoping never to offend the wrong person.
Unfortunately, Drake had done exactly that.
It had started with something small.
A collision in the city market.
A spilled package of medicine.
A demand for compensation.
To an ordinary person, it would have been a minor argument.
To Leon Valerius, it had been an insult.
Drake could still hear the young master’s lazy voice in his head.
“A beggar dares raise his voice at me?” The next moment, Leon’s guards had moved.
Drake had escaped only because the market had been crowded and because desperation made him faster than pride.
But nobles did not forgive humiliation, especially not from someone powerless.
Now their men were hunting him through the forest.
A sharp whistle cut through the air.
Drake threw himself sideways just as a crossbow bolt slammed into the tree ahead of him.
Bark exploded outward, showering his cheek with splinters.
He hit the ground hard, rolled, and scrambled back to his feet before the pain could settle in.
“There!
I saw him!” “Move!” Drake ran again.
His legs trembled beneath him.
His body had passed exhaustion long ago, but fear kept him moving.
Fear, and something stronger than fear.
Luna.
His sister’s face rose in his mind, pale and still beneath the blue light of the hospital chamber.
She had always been the bright one between them.
Even in the orphanage, even when food was scarce and the other children mocked them for having no family name, Luna had smiled as if the world was still worth forgiving.
Then the mana disease had taken her.
It began with fainting spells.
Then fever.
Then her mana core, weak and unstable from birth, started consuming her life force instead of nourishing her body.
The doctors called it Deep Mana Depletion Syndrome, a rare condition that pushed victims into a coma while their vitality drained day by day.
There was a treatment, but not a cure.
Expensive mana stabilizers, purified beast cores, and regular sessions inside a life-support chamber could keep her alive.
For now.
Only Drake paid for it.
No parents.
No relatives.
No noble sponsor.
No guild charity.
Just him.
If he died here, Luna would be alone.
The hospital would keep her chamber active for a few unpaid days, maybe a week if someone pitied her.
After that, they would disconnect it and call it procedure.
The thought struck harder than any blade.
“No” Drake whispered through clenched teeth.
He pushed forward, ignoring the burning in his muscles.
He had not survived years of hunger, debt collectors, dungeon waste jobs, and back-alley beatings just to die because a noble brat’s pride had been bruised.
The forest began to change.
At first, Drake barely noticed.
The trees grew thinner, their bark dark and twisted.
The air became colder.
The distant cries of insects and birds disappeared until only his own ragged breathing remained.
Even the men chasing him seemed to slow, their shouts growing uncertain.
Then the trees opened into a clearing, and Drake saw the monument.
It stood half-buried in moss and black vines, its surface cracked by time.
Faded warning symbols had been carved into the stone, accompanied by words every citizen in the region knew to fear.
THE DEAD RUINS.
ENTRY FORBIDDEN.
Beyond the monument stretched a ruined land swallowed by darkness.
Collapsed towers rose like broken teeth from the earth.
Ancient walls lay shattered across the ground.
Rusted weapons, stone statues, and fragments of unknown machinery littered the wasteland.
A thin black mist drifted through everything, carrying with it a suffocating pressure that made Drake’s skin crawl.
This place had once been a dungeon.
Not an ordinary one, but an S-Rank dungeon that had burst open during the early age of awakening.
The monsters within had poured into the world in numbers so great that several cities vanished in a single week.
The war that followed lasted three years and claimed millions of lives before humanity finally drove the creatures back.
But the dungeon never truly disappeared.
Its core had collapsed, poisoning the land with corrupted mana.
Over time, the battlefield became known as the Dead Ruins.
Hunters entered sometimes in search of relics, but even experienced teams avoided its depths.
People said the mana there whispered to the dead.
Others claimed monsters still slept beneath the ground, waiting for blood to wake them.
Drake stopped for half a breath.
Behind him, the hunters emerged from the forest.
One of them cursed.
“He ran to the ruins.” Another voice answered, lower and more nervous.
“Young Master didn’t say anything about going in there.” “He said bring him back.” “You can bring him back yourself, then.
I’m not dying in that cursed place for a commoner.” Their hesitation was all Drake needed.
He crossed the boundary and entered the Dead Ruins.
The moment he stepped past the monument, the air changed completely.
It pressed against his chest like invisible water.
Every breath felt colder, thicker, wrong.
The black mist curled around his ankles, and for a moment Drake thought he heard faint whispers beneath the wind.
He ignored them and kept moving.
The ruined battlefield stretched wider than it had appeared from the forest.
He passed broken siege engines covered in moss, walls carved with claw marks larger than his body, and statues of forgotten warriors whose faces had been worn smooth by time.
The place felt less abandoned than waiting, as if the entire ruin had turned its attention toward him.
Behind him, the hunters entered at last.
Their footsteps were slower now.
More cautious.
Drake smiled bitterly.
They were afraid.
Good.
He moved deeper through the ruins, searching for anything that might hide him.
A collapsed temple.
A drainage tunnel.
A crack between old walls.
Anything.
But the terrain was open and uneven, and the corrupted mist made it difficult to see more than a dozen meters ahead.
Then he spotted the cave.
It waited at the base of a shattered cliff, partly hidden behind fallen pillars and dead vines.
The entrance was narrow and jagged, and darkness poured from it like smoke from a dying fire.
The mana around it felt denser than anywhere else in the ruins.
Every instinct Drake possessed screamed at him not to enter.
He entered anyway.
The cave swallowed him whole.
Inside, the sounds of the outside world faded almost instantly.
The hunters’ voices became muffled, then distant.
Water dripped somewhere in the dark, each drop echoing far longer than it should have.
Drake placed one hand against the wall to guide himself forward, feeling cold stone beneath his palm.
At first, the cave seemed natural.
Uneven walls, damp ground, sharp rocks.
But as he moved deeper, the stone began to change.
The rough surfaces gave way to carved black walls.
Drake slowed despite the danger behind him.
Strange symbols covered the passage.
They were unlike any language he had seen in old textbooks or dungeon reports.
Some twisted like serpents.
Others resembled eyes, claws, or stars.
They were arranged in patterns too precise to be accidental, flowing along the walls and ceiling as if the entire tunnel had been written into existence.
Murals appeared between the symbols.
They depicted monsters.
Not the common beasts Hunters killed for cores and materials, but terrifying beings of myth.
Dragons with crowns of flame.
Wolves large enough to swallow moons.
Winged serpents coiled around mountains.
Giants kneeling beneath black suns.
And in every mural, the monsters faced the same direction.
Forward.
Toward something deeper inside.
Drake’s breath caught.
“What is this place?” A sound answered him.
Footsteps.
Not from ahead.
From behind.
“He went into the cave!” “Careful.
Mana readings are unstable.” “Just find him.
Young Master Leon will skin us if we return empty-handed.” Panic surged through Drake again.
He forced himself forward, moving faster through the ancient corridor.
The darkness thickened, but the symbols gave off a faint silver glow, just enough for him to see.
The passage eventually split.
One path continued wide and straight, lined with murals of kneeling beasts.
The other was barely visible: a narrow gap between two slabs of black stone, hidden behind a curtain of hanging roots.
Drake did not have time to think.
He squeezed into the gap.
Stone scraped against his shoulders and ribs.
His shirt tore.
For several seconds he feared he would get stuck, trapped like an animal in a crack while the hunters closed in behind him.
He exhaled hard, made himself smaller, and pushed through with everything he had.
The gap opened suddenly.
Drake stumbled out into a corridor unlike anything he had ever seen.
The walls were smooth and untouched by age.
Tall pillars stood on both sides, carved with spiraling patterns that seemed to shift when he looked away.
The floor beneath his boots was made of polished black stone, reflecting the faint glow of countless silver symbols overhead.
There was no dust.
No moss.
No sign of decay.
The Dead Ruins above had been broken by centuries of war and corrupted mana, but this corridor looked as if it had been sealed away from time itself.
Drake felt something then.
A presence.
Not a monster.
Not a person.
Something deeper.
Older.
It was not chasing him.
It was not attacking him.
It was simply aware of him.
His mouth went dry.
At the far end of the corridor stood a massive stone door.
Its surface was covered in carvings more detailed than the rest.
Drake approached slowly, drawn forward despite the fear crawling under his skin.
The carvings showed countless beasts surrounding a single figure whose shape had been deliberately erased.
Dragons lowered their heads before it.
Titans bent their knees.
Serpents curled around its feet like obedient pets.
Above them all was the image of a hand.
A human-like hand.
Something dark was wrapped around it.
Not a bracelet.
Not armor.
A living thing.
Drake lifted his own hand before he realized what he was doing.
The symbols on the door pulsed.
Behind him, voices entered the narrow passage.
“He’s in here!” “Move!” Drake’s heart slammed against his ribs.
He stepped back, searching for another exit, but there was none.
Only the door, the corridor, and the hunters closing in.
“Damn it…” He placed his palm against the stone.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the entire corridor trembled.
The silver symbols blazed with light.
A deep sound rolled through the ground, not quite a roar, not quite a voice.
Drake tried to pull his hand away, but the stone beneath him cracked.
His eyes widened.
“No—” The floor collapsed.
One moment he was standing before the ancient door.
The next, he was falling into darkness.
Drake screamed as the world vanished above him.
Broken stone tumbled around his body.
His arms flailed uselessly, striking empty air.
He hit something hard on the way down, spun, and continued falling.
Then he struck the ground.
Pain exploded through him.
For a while, there was nothing.
Only darkness.
Only silence.
When Drake opened his eyes again, he could not tell how much time had passed.
His body felt shattered.
Every breath hurt.
His left arm throbbed badly, and warm blood ran down the side of his face.
But he was alive.
Somehow.
He groaned and pushed himself upright.
Then he saw where he had fallen.
The chamber was enormous.
It stretched beneath the ruins like the heart of a buried kingdom.
Vast pillars of crystal rose from the ground, glowing with pale blue light.
Rivers of liquid mana flowed through channels carved into the floor, silent and impossibly bright.
The air was heavy with power, but unlike the corrupted mana above, this mana felt pure.
Ancient.
Hungry.
At the center of the chamber stood a staircase of black stone.
And at the top of that staircase was a tomb.
Drake forgot how to breathe.
The tomb was majestic and terrifying, larger than a noble mansion and carved from a material darker than night.
Symbols moved across its surface like living veins.
Around it knelt thousands of statues, each one shaped like a different monster.
Some were beautiful.
Some were grotesque.
Some were so alien that Drake’s mind struggled to understand their forms.
All of them bowed toward the tomb.
Not in fear.
In worship.
Drake slowly stood, his legs shaking beneath him.
He should have looked for a way out.
He should have hidden before the hunters found another path down.
He should have done anything except stare.
But he could not look away.
Something on the tomb had begun to move.
At first, Drake thought it was one of the symbols.
Then the darkness behind the tomb shifted, separating itself from the stone like a shadow peeling away from a wall.
A pair of crimson eyes opened in the dark.
Drake’s blood turned cold.
The chamber trembled.
And from somewhere deep within the tomb, a voice older than the ruins whispered into his mind.
At last…
a living vessel.