The ruins beneath Aurelion had forgotten what they were built for.
That was the first thing Xiel learned.
He stood at the edge of a collapsed stairwell, lantern held low, its pale flame trembling against stone that had once been sacred. The walls were smooth in places where carvings should have been, blank in a way that felt intentional. Not worn down by time. Removed.
Xiel exhaled slowly, steadying his breath.
"Of course," he muttered. "Another clean wound."
Behind him, the iron gate groaned shut as the last of the surface light vanished. The city above — Aurelion, Jewel of the New Dawn — sealed itself away with the casual cruelty of something that never needed to look back.
Down here, the world felt thinner.
Xiel descended carefully, boots scraping against debris older than any recorded map. He'd been cataloging Lower Ruin Sites for three years now — forgotten temples, sealed halls, entire streets buried after the Battle of Gods reshaped the continent into rubble and ash.
Most people called them danger zones.
Xiel called them honest.
At least the ruins didn't pretend to remember what they had lost.
The chamber opened suddenly, the stairs giving way to a vast circular room. His lantern's light crawled across cracked pillars and fractured tiles, revealing a place that should have been magnificent.
Should have been.
Xiel frowned.
"No sigils," he whispered. "No residuals."
Not even a trace.
That was wrong.
Even the weakest sanctums carried echoes — lingering prayers, warped mana, divine scars embedded into stone. Here, there was nothing. No warmth. No chill. Just an absence that made his skin prickle.
He stepped forward.
The sound of his footsteps felt too loud.
Xiel knelt, brushing dust aside with gloved fingers. Beneath it lay an altar — or what remained of one. Its surface was unnaturally smooth, edges softened not by erosion but by something closer to indifference.
As if reality had decided this shape was unnecessary.
"Someone erased you," Xiel murmured.
His ledger lay open beside him, pages filled with careful notes and half-finished sketches. He hesitated, quill hovering.
There was no classification for this.
Erasure wasn't a phenomenon scholars liked to acknowledge. It implied intent. Agency. A choice to remove rather than destroy.
And choices made the past uncomfortable.
Xiel stood, suddenly aware of the silence pressing in around him. His lantern flickered. The flame didn't dim — it hesitated, as though unsure whether light was still expected to exist here.
A shiver ran down his spine.
Get what you came for, he told himself. Then leave.
He circled the chamber once more, slower this time, senses alert. No movement. No hidden passages. No wards waiting to snap shut.
And yet—
He stopped.
The thought came unbidden, sharp and absolute.
This place shouldn't be here.
The moment the thought formed, the air shifted.
Not violently. Not dramatically.
It was subtle — like the world taking a breath it hadn't known it was holding.
Xiel's heart skipped.
"What?" he whispered.
Nothing answered.
The pressure faded. Sound returned — the soft drip of water somewhere far below, the faint creak of stone settling.
Xiel laughed quietly, more nerves than humor.
"Just ruins," he said. "You're tired."
Still, he wrote nothing about the thought.
Some things felt safer undocumented.
By the time Xiel emerged back into Aurelion's lower ward, the city was already awake.
Sunlight filtered through hanging banners and fractured arches, illuminating streets crowded with merchants, scavengers, and pilgrims alike. Aurelion had been built atop layers of older civilizations, each one cannibalized to support the next.
New Dawn, they called it.
Xiel had always thought that name was optimistic at best.
He moved through the crowd easily, worn satchel slung over one shoulder, expression neutral. People saw a ruin-scribe and looked away — not out of fear, but discomfort. No one liked those who made a living from reminders.
"Xiel!"
He turned.
Elira waved from the steps of a corner apothecary, dark hair pulled back, sleeves already stained with ink and herbs. She smiled when she saw him, genuine and unguarded.
Something in Xiel's chest loosened.
"You're late," she said as he approached. "Again."
"Ruins didn't want to let me go," he replied.
She rolled her eyes. "One day they'll keep you. Then who'll catalog their mess?"
"Someone worse," Xiel said lightly.
She studied him for a moment, smile fading just enough to notice. "You look pale."
"Underground air."
"That excuse is getting old."
"Just like the gods," Xiel said before he could stop himself.
Elira stiffened.
"That's not funny," she said quietly.
Xiel winced. "Sorry."
Around them, life continued — carts rattling past, voices overlapping, the Ascendant Chain's sigils glinting faintly on patrol uniforms as god-sanctioned enforcers passed by.
Everyone knew the gods still existed.
They just pretended not to ask how.
Elira changed the subject, as she always did. "Rheln's looking for you. Something about a sealed descent opening near the eastern quarter."
Xiel's stomach sank.
"Again?"
She nodded. "This one's bad. People say the walls are… blank."
Xiel froze.
"Blank how?"
Elira hesitated. "Like someone erased the inside."
The word hung between them.
Xiel forced a smile. "I'll take a look."
As he walked away, he felt it again — that faint pressure behind his eyes, that sense of something listening just a little too closely.
He told himself it was imagination.
The world had always been broken.
Why would it choose now to notice him?
That night, Xiel dreamed of silence.
Not quiet.
Silence — vast, attentive, patient.
He stood in the ruins again, but they were gone. Not destroyed. Simply absent. In their place was an empty shape where something important had once been.
He reached out.
The moment his fingers brushed the edge of that absence—
He woke gasping, heart racing, his name half-formed on his lips.
Xiel sat up in bed, drenched in sweat, staring into the dark of his small apartment. Moonlight spilled through the window, illuminating shelves of ledgers and fragments rescued from forgotten places.
All proof that things had once existed.
He pressed a hand to his chest, breathing slowly.
"I'm just tired," he whispered.
But somewhere deep beneath that thought, another stirred — quiet, dangerous, unfinished.
A sense that the world had leaned close today.
And that next time…
…it might answer.