The climb into the city was a slow, arduous process. Each handhold on the collapsed section of the wall had to be tested, each piece of rubble checked before bearing my full weight. Loose stones skittered down the slope with nearly every movement, the clattering sounds unnaturally loud in the pervasive silence. By the time I reached the top and could look down into the city proper, my muscles trembled from the strain and my breathing came in ragged pants.
For a long moment, I simply stood there, regaining my breath and taking in the view. The silence was profound. Out on the plains, there had at least been the constant whisper of the wind. Here, there was nothing. It was a deep, heavy quiet that seemed to absorb sound rather than echo it.
Croft landed beside me, his claws making a soft tick-tick sound on the stone. "The air is different here," he observed, his voice hushed. "Stagnant."
I nodded, my eyes scanning the scene before us. "It feels... preserved. Like a tomb."
We began our careful descent into the city. The streets were vast, wide enough for twenty men to walk abreast, and the buildings that lined them reached impossible heights, their tops lost in the grey haze above. Everything was constructed from the same dark, finely carved stone. The geometric patterns I had seen elsewhere were everywhere here, covering every surface in a language of cold precision. Our footsteps—the scuff of my boots and the occasional hop of Croft's claws—were the only sounds, and they echoed far too loudly in the cavernous avenues.
We walked for nearly twenty minutes in silence before I spoke again. My eyes were drawn not to the grand scale, but to the smaller details. "It's all still here," I murmured, my voice low. I pointed to a collapsed wooden cart, its wheels petrified but its shape unmistakable. A little further on, a stone bench sat before what might have been a shopfront, a scattering of rusted metal tools lying where they had fallen. "Their belongings. They didn't vanish. They were just... left behind."
"Time and dust are the only victors here," Croft replied from a low wall where he had perched. "The people are gone, but the echoes of their lives remain."
We came to a large, open square. In its center stood the remains of a massive fountain, its basin dry and webbed with deep cracks. I walked to its edge, peering down into its empty depths. Around the square, the ruins of market stalls stood like the ribs of long-dead beasts, fragments of pottery and glass glittering in the dust at their bases. The scale of the plaza was staggering; it could have held thousands.
"This was a gathering place," I murmured, my voice barely carrying.
"Likely the main market square," Croft agreed, flying to the fountain's rim. "The heart of the city's daily life."
Leaving the square, we entered a district of smaller, though still immense, structures. We chose one at random, entering through a doorway where the door had long since rotted away, leaving only iron hinges clinging to the stone. The interior was dim, but light streamed through a hole in the ceiling, illuminating a scene frozen in time. A stone table was set with ceramic plates, now covered in a thick layer of dust. A wooden bowl held the petrified remains of some forgotten meal. In one corner, a loom stood with a half-finished tapestry, the colors faded but the pattern still visible.
In a smaller room off the main one, I found a chest made of some dark wood that had resisted rot. Hoping for food or a weapon, I pried it open. Inside, folded neatly, were clothes. They were simple—trousers and a tunic of a sturdy, dark grey cloth, and a heavier wool cloak. They were musty, but intact.
"My clothes are falling apart," I said to Croft, who was observing from the doorframe. I held the tunic up against myself. It looked like it would fit.
"An upgrade from rags," Croft remarked. "Take the cloak as well. The nights are cold."
I changed quickly, the new clothes feeling strange but welcome against my skin. The rough-spun fabric was durable, and the cloak was thick and warm. I kept my old, worn boots; they were still serviceable. In the bottom of the chest, I also found a leather belt and a waterskin, dry and brittle but potentially useful.
Feeling slightly more human, we continued our exploration. We found a structure that was different from the others. It was wider, with a grand, arched entrance, though the doors were long gone. The carvings around the frame were more elaborate, depicting interlocking gears and stylized flames.
"A guild hall, perhaps," Croft mused as we entered.
The interior was a vast, open space supported by thick pillars. Along the walls, stone workbenches stood, and complex tools of rusted metal lay scattered about. In the center of the room was a massive, cold forge. Anvils of various sizes stood nearby, and on a rack hung the skeletal remains of blacksmith's hammers and tongs.
"The Aethelians were master craftsmen," Croft explained, landing on an anvil. "They worshipped the God of Smithing. Their entire society was built upon the principle of perfecting the physical world through craft."
I ran a hand over the cold stone of the forge. "The work is impeccable. Even now, you can feel the quality." I picked up a rusted chisel, its wooden handle long since crumbled to dust. "They put their soul into everything they made."
We spent the next several hours moving methodically through different districts. We found a vast, columned hall that might have been a seat of government, its floor littered with shattered stone tablets that might have been laws or decrees. A complex of buildings with deep, tiled pools that suggested a public bathhouse, the pipes and drains still visible. A towering structure with tiered stone seating that could only have been a stadium, its field now home to nothing but dust-devils. The sheer ambition of the construction was humbling. Everywhere, the silence reigned, broken only by our movements and the whispers of the past.
It was in a building that seemed administrative in nature, its halls lined with small, cell-like rooms containing stone desks and stools, that we made a significant discovery. In one chamber on an upper floor, a large stone table had fallen over, and beneath it, protected from the elements, was a large sheet of treated vellum.
"A map," I breathed, carefully lifting the heavy table aside with a grunt of effort.
The map was faded, its colors muted with age, but it was largely intact. It depicted the entire continent of Eden, a landmass of staggering size. Dominating the southwestern region, exactly where we now stood, was the territory of the Aethelian Empire. Their domain stretched from a jagged coastline to a formidable mountain range, with this city marked as their capital by a prominent symbol: a hammer crossed with a wand.
"The God of Smithing and Sorcery," I said, tracing the symbol with my finger. "Their patron deities."
"Yes," Croft confirmed, landing on the edge of the parchment. "They believed that the material world, shaped by the smith's hammer, and the arcane world, commanded by the sorcerer's will, were two sides of the same coin. Mastery of both was the path to greatness."
I studied the map, absorbing the scale of their lost realm. "Their empire was immense."
"For nearly a millennium, they were the preeminent power in this part of Eden," Croft said. "Their influence stretched far beyond these borders through trade and knowledge."
My eyes kept returning to the capital. "Such a powerful civilization, built on such a specific belief. How does it simply... end?"
"The disputes of gods care little for the achievements of mortals," Croft replied, his tone somber. "When the war between Death and Fate ignited, it was a fire that consumed everything in its path. No amount of craft or sorcery could shield them from that."
We carefully rolled the map, deciding to take it with us. It was too valuable a source of information to leave behind. As we continued our exploration, the map gave context to everything we saw. We found workshops where sorcerers might have enchanted items crafted by smiths, and libraries where technical schematics were stored alongside arcane formulae, the scrolls themselves now just piles of black dust on stone shelves.
In a spacious, well-appointed home—likely belonging to a wealthy merchant or official—I found another artifact on a bedside table: a small, finely detailed horse figurine, cast in bronze with traces of silver inlay on its bridle.
"The craftsmanship is extraordinary," I observed, holding it up to the faint light from a high window. "Even in a bedside trinket."
"They took pride in every creation," Croft said. "It was a matter of principle, of faith. To create something poorly was an insult to their god."
As the long afternoon began to wane, the grey light deepening into twilight, we sought shelter in a structure that had once been a public house. Stone stools stood around a central hearth, now cold for centuries. I sat on one, unrolling the map once more on a stone counter, the new cloak wrapped around my shoulders against the growing chill.
"They built an entire civilization around the God of Smithing and Sorcery," I mused, thinking aloud. "Their identity was rooted in it. And yet..." I looked at Croft. "The church where I woke up was dedicated to the God of Fate. Why would they build a temple to a rival deity in their own heartland?"
Croft, perched on the counter beside the map, tilted his head. "Hubris, perhaps. Or desperation. Even the mightiest empire knows it exists within a larger cosmos. They sought to understand the forces that ultimately governed their fate, to measure the unmeasurable. Building a temple was an attempt to quantify the unquantifiable, to bring the concept of destiny within the realm of their understanding. It is the ultimate expression of their nature: to try and craft, even from the abstract, something tangible."
The pull in my chest seemed to resonate with a new intensity, as if the history we were uncovering was somehow fueling it. The city was no longer just a collection of empty ruins; it was becoming a narrative—a tragic story of a people who had reached for perfection in an imperfect and unforgiving world.