The storm moved like a ghost over the dead land. A great civilization had fallen here, long ago, its memory lost to the flow of centuries. This was the Borderlands—a place the gods had left, taking their power with them, leaving only silence behind.
Empty streets coiled through wreckage and ruins, all that remained of a world that had once lived. Now it was a forgotten wilderness. Weeds grew freely, their green tangling over broken temples and silent laboratories. Seen from above, the land looked like a torn map—the sharp edges of what had been, divided from what was now.
And then she saw it: the source of the golden light.
A ruined temple lay half-buried under fallen stone and broken rock. It had crumbled long ago, but at its heart stood one last monolith, washed in a soft, golden glow. Its surface was carved with signs she had never seen—different from the ones before, yet humming with a quiet order, a power waiting beneath the surface.
She stopped before the stone, her eyes resting on its shimmer. Her face showed little, but inside—she understood. Something in her reached out toward this broken world.
She lifted her hand, steady, and laid her palm against the stone.
The air went still. As if time had caught its breath.
Then—a low hum resonated from the stone. The golden light flashed, sudden and bright, cutting through the dim. She leaned into the glow, her heart beating hard, as if something asleep inside her had stirred awake.
She closed her eyes and breathed. Deeply. Slowly.
There—a presence, familiar, waking in this abandoned place. It threaded through her fingers, into her soul. She didn't speak. Only stood. As if her whole life had been leading to this.
The golden light pulsed on.
Around her, the temple seemed to gather some old strength—reclaiming a fragment of what it had been. The air grew thick. The storm's voice no longer felt like it was wearing the land away—but like an opening note. The first sound before something begins.
She opened her eyes. Her gaze held firm on the glimmering gold.
And in that moment, she knew—everything started here.
The instant her fingers made contact, time didn't pause—it shattered. Fragments, sharp and immense, tore through her awareness. Not memories, not visions. Something deeper. The forge-fire heat of stars being born. The absolute cold of laws laid down at the dawn of things. A breathless whisper of oaths made in the void. And then… the hollow, soundless grief of a fall that shook the heavens. This gold wasn't just light banishing shadow. It was an ignition. A thing asleep inside her since the first star died flared awake. The roar began in her marrow, a vibration rising from within her own blood. Light erupted from the monolith, not to scatter, but to coil around her arm like some conscious, living cord. It was heat without a burn. It felt… like arrival. Like something lost, returning. Beneath her skin, her very veins seemed to carry liquid sunlight, all of it rushing toward her left hand, pooling, concentrating, hardening into a symbol on her skin—a design of impossible complexity, older than the ruins, utterly alien. A shut eye. A star-gate in miniature. It pulsed, a soft, steady rhythm matching the beat of her heart.
The light faded. The monolith returned to being a lifeless rock, as if everything had just been a trick of time and space. But the clear, golden mark on her hand, and the warm, vast, flowing sensation inside her—something she'd never felt before—declared it all real.
The storm had ceased at some point. The ruins fell into a deeper silence, where even the wind's weathered lament was gone. The air, however, hung heavy, thick as liquid lead.
"Bearer…"
The voice sounded again, directly in her mind, clearer now, carrying a subtle, ancient exhaustion, piled high across millennia.
She slowly withdrew her hand, gazing at the mark. No panic, no questions—just a deep, almost sorrowful understanding. She finally knew what she had been searching for all this time in the desolation. It wasn't answers. It was this mark, destined for her long ago.
"It is me," she responded inwardly, her silent words clearly transmitted.
"The dust of time has buried my name. You may call me 'Keeper'," the voice replied. "The last echo of the previous wielder of the 'Authority' you now hold."
She turned. The ruins were the same ruins, but her perception of the world was fundamentally altered. Faint, shimmering trails of light, like mist, now clung to the broken stones—lingering shadows of energies long spent. Faint, broken whispers drifted on the air, belonging to souls long extinguished. This god-forsaken land was beginning to reveal its hidden wounds and memories to her.
"What must I do?" Her thoughts formed the query, simple and direct.
"Survive." The Keeper's reply was equally brief, but carried the weight of mountains. "The awakening of the 'Primordial Light' within you is like a boulder dropped into stagnant water for this land. Those who linger beyond the borders, those who slumber in the abyss… they will sense it. They will hunt this light. They will seek to devour it."
Almost as the Keeper's words faded, she keenly sensed the shift. Not through sound or sight, but through a distortion in the very 'rules' around her. In the distance, shadows that were once just natural piles began to writhe unnaturally, like ink dropped into clear water, polluting the energy trails she could now barely see. A cloying, rotten sweetness began to taint the air—the mark of something alien to reality drawing near.
They had no true form, only pure 'Hunger' and 'Malice'.
"They are here," she stated flatly, her eyes scanning the courtyard. The derelict space was now riddled with dangerous ripples.
"Wield your Authority," the Keeper's voice urged. "The Light is not just hope. It is a shield. A blade. Feel it. Guide it. Like your own breath."
She raised her left hand. The mark on it grew warm, almost hot. She focused her will on the source of the warm power, then thrust her hand forward.
No earth-shattering roar followed, only a soft yet resilient golden halo spreading out from her, forming a huge, semi-transparent bell-like shield. Where the edge of this luminescence touched the writhing shadows, sharp, sizzling hisses erupted, like cold water hitting hot oil. The shadows recoiled like startled vipers, but more seeped from the cracks in the ruins all around, swarming, battering against the light-shield.
The shield wavered violently. Fine sweat beaded on her forehead. Sustaining it didn't drain physical strength, but something more fundamental—her spirit. She could feel the warm power rapidly depleting.
"Can't just hold the line," she realized instantly. Her gaze locked onto a relatively intact archway at the edge of the courtyard, where the energy residues seemed thinner—a potentially safer path.
She dropped the shield. In the heartbeat before the shadows closed in, she shot forward like an arrow from a bow. Her movements were impossibly light, each step landing precisely on the most stable nodes of the fading energy trails, as if she'd walked these ruins a thousand times before. The wind whistled past her ears, mingled with the mind-scrambling murmurs the pursuing shadows emitted.
A particularly dense shadow lunged from the side like a giant serpent, carrying an aura that corroded everything. She couldn't dodge. Her right hand instinctively clenched empty air. The remaining light within her responded, coalescing into a slender, flickering spear of light in her grasp. She threw it back-handed. The spear pierced the shadow like a red-hot iron rod through snow. The shadow let out a soundless shriek and dissolved.
But the effort sent a wave of dizziness through her. Her power was almost gone.
She dashed into the archway, desperately gathering the last dregs of her power into the mark. It glowed again, this time not for defense or attack, but like a beacon, releasing a powerful flash behind her.
The pursuing shadows contorted in agony within the brilliant light, halting for a precious moment.
Using this brief respite, she scrambled into a hidden, half-blocked opening at the end of the archway, pressing her body against the cold, damp rock wall. She held her breath, pulling back all her presence, suppressing the newly awakened, unsteady light she carried.
Outside, the writhing and murmuring of the shadows persisted for a long time before slowly receding, thick with frustration.
The ruins returned to their deathly silence, broken only by the echo of her own frantic heartbeat in the dark. The mark on her hand dimmed, leaving only a faint warmth and its outline. Fatigue washed over her like a tide, but her mind was acutely, painfully clear.
The Keeper's voice did not return. Its earlier guidance seemed to have been the limit.
She leaned against the rock wall and slowly slid to the ground. She opened her hands. On her left—the golden mark, symbol of an unknown fate. On her right—the crimson, all-too-mortal blood welling from scrapes earned against rough stone.
Light and blood. The sacred and the mundane. Destiny and survival.
She bowed her head and pressed her lips lightly against the cold mark, as if sealing a silent vow.
Then she lifted her head, looking out through the opening at the shattered sky beyond. Her gaze pierced the immediate darkness, fixing on the depths of the ruins farther away—deeper, more dangerous.
Her journey had only just begun. And the line between hunter and hunted had, from this moment, blurred into nothingness.
She raised her hand, eyes lingering on the mark that was now part of her. Then, her gaze shifted beyond the passage, toward the expanse of the forgotten kingdom.
The ruins remained silent. The stories told by the stone slabs were still tales of glory and ruin. But now, a new thread was woven into the narrative—one of light moving through the shadows.
She sheathed her blade and stepped deeper into the passage. Perhaps a way out of Fugē Àoníng lay ahead. Or perhaps, something far deeper awaited.
Her footsteps made no sound, yet they carried a weight they had not borne before—a weight that would not fade.