They decided to stay another night in the ruined temple, giving the young cook more time to recover. The river nearby provided fresh water, and they had plenty of meat left from the Class III.
But Elion had another reason for suggesting the delay.
He wanted to study the ruins—search for clues that might reveal where they were.
With one of the sticks from Eshrod's hunt as a makeshift cane, he stepped away from the flickering firelight. The surroundings were silent. He limped through the shadowy ruins, eyes tracing the dark brown stones.
Crouching close to one wall, Elion scratched his chin, trying to make sense of the symbols inscribed on the stone. They looked familiar, but he couldn't place them. He did notice that they looked as if they had been carved long after the structures were built.
Something else caught his attention—the stone pillars.
Some extended into the water, vanishing beneath the dark surface.
So the river wasn't always this wide. That could explain this place's abandonment.
Across the river, only faint spots of bioluminescence marked the far wall. It wasn't as massive as the First River, but still sizable—too large for an uncharted branch.
He examined one pillar more closely. There was a faint line about three meters up its base. Below that, the stone was darker, more eroded.
The water used to be higher…
He kept limping through the ruins, circling the perimeter before eventually returning to the temple—disappointed. Nothing he found offered any real hints about their location, the water having eroded the clues long ago.
Nothing had survived, but maybe the temple itself held answers.
It was the tallest structure still standing. If anything had survived the river's floods, it would be there.
Ignoring the skeptical looks from Farha and Eshrod, Elion awkwardly climbed to the upper level. The temple had two floors. The Gremlin had explored them briefly before declaring the place safe—that was when he and Farha had arrived.
Most of the rooms were bare, stripped by water and time. No markings or relics, nothing useful.
But the second floor had fared better.
The ground was made of pale wooden beams underneath a type of ceramic tile, untouched by floodwaters. Colors still clung to the dusty surface. Elion cleared away debris, brushing it aside until some fell through the gaps in the floor below.
"Watch it!" Eshrod shouted from below.
He ignored her.
As the dust cleared, a faded image emerged.
A woman was depicted, draped in a crimson dress with gold accents. Her skin was the color of ash. Two small grey horns protruded from her pure white hair. She was depicted bestowing a blessing upon a human.
Her face was violently defaced—crossed out with black lines etched into the ceramic itself. It hadn't faded with time. Someone had deliberately destroyed her image.
A heretical act?
Elion frowned. He didn't recognize the figure from any of his history books.
Could it be from the Third Age?
A depiction of Earth God?
It was the only god without a known depiction—at least, none ever discovered.
Or maybe a pagan or fake deity…
He examined the runes surrounding the image. They looked exactly the same as those found on the boat, confirming the connection between it and the ruins.
Then something clicked. He stared at his forearm, his eyes following the glowing text erratically.
The strange line in the tattoo. The one that didn't match the rest.
These runes looked like that one.
No wonder I couldn't translate it. But then… why do these bear a slight resemblance to Terask, while the ones on the boat and the temple floor do not?
Maybe the runes on my arm are a later iteration—descendants of the original script, borrowing from the forgotten language.
Could this place be connected to the Voice of God?
The resemblance was too strong to dismiss.
Driven by curiosity, Elion searched the floor for more. A shape half-lost in the shadows caught his eye—a shattered desk, collapsed in the middle, its rotting wood crumbling away.
Something sat atop the debris. A book.
Its wine-red cover was faded and fraying. Gold accents still clung to its edges, matching the colors of the figure's dress.
He quickly opened it, careful not to break the fragile pages. They were yellowed by time and humidity, rendering them almost unreadable. Worse, most of the symbols in the text were crossed out and buried beneath black ink, as if someone was trying to hide something.
That's not going to stop me though!
He sat cross-legged on the cold floor, carefully laying the volume in front of him and flipping the pages one by one. Fortunately, there were pictures, though the faces were all crossed in black ink too.
What did they want to hide that was so important?
Why not just burn the damn book at this point?
The legible text he found was written in Terask, much to Elion's surprise. He still couldn't make much sense of them since most of the text was rendered unreadable by the book's state.
Some of the crossed words had symbols written over them, the same as those written on the ruins.
But there was a noticeable difference—the symbols used to deface the book and the ones on the ruins didn't quite match those etched into the boat, the temple floor, or even the strange line on Elion's forearm.
They likely shared a common origin—but were used for different purposes…
Elion didn't know how long he spent up there. At some point, he dozed off in front of his newfound trove of forbidden knowledge.
When he woke, Farha was sitting against the wall, holding the book.
"You can read it?" he asked groggily.
Startled by his voice, she turned toward him and shook her head.
"Figures. Why are you up here though?"
She took out a piece of burnt wood, using the soot to write on the ground.
Don't deface this! It might hold unimaginable secrets!
Elion gritted his teeth but said nothing.
The word she wrote read:
Came to check on you.
"How nice of you," he muttered. "As you can see, I'm fine."
The young cook raised both arms in the air, displaying his multiple bloodied bandages.
Farha tilted her head and raised an eyebrow, but she didn't write anything else on the ground, much to Elion's quiet relief.
She stood up and handed him the book back, gesturing for him to follow her down.
Eshrod was waiting below, pack slung over her shoulder, the fire extinguished.
"Took you long enough," she said. "What were you two doing up there?"
"Uncovering unimaginable secrets from the past," Elion replied dryly.
"How romantic." She smirked, that look in her one open eye—the look Elion had grown to loathe.
Farha remained completely unreadable. She silently shouldered her own pack and walked ahead.
Elion tucked the book into his bag, careful to nestle it between folded cloth to avoid damaging the pages.
He glanced back at the temple one last time, then turned to follow.
"What are you doing?" Eshrod called ahead. "We've got a river to chase!"
He turned, walking away.
With the book, he could at least try to decipher the runes and maybe find out why the original text was written in Terask—making the detour worth it.
Now, the three Unlocked pushed deeper into the unknown, chasing the river toward whatever awaited at its hidden end.