With the steady clatter of the rails echoing through the carriage, Alphard leaned his head against the window frame. On the other side of the glass, the majestic metropolis began to blur. The grand boulevards lined with neoclassical facades, the elegant polished iron balustrades, and the tall steam chimneys gradually gave way.
Little by little, the capital's sobriety dissolved into a far more functional architecture: rows of two-story houses with exposed brick façades, low slate roofs, and small plazas paved with worn cobblestone, where life moved at a far less frantic pace.
It wasn't open countryside, nor a forgotten village, but a modest, sober, hardworking provincial town.
When the locomotive finally screeched to a halt at Fercluse station, the three of them stepped off the carriage.
The air that greeted them was drastically different from the capital's.
The atmosphere carried a thick blend of coal steam and sulfur drifting from the boiler, but the moment they took a few steps beyond the platform's canopy, the smell of earth freshly wet from rain took over completely.
Layered beneath that was a persistent note of burning wood from nearby homes, a sweet trace of toasted grain from some barn close by, and the damp freshness of moss growing between the joints of old stone.
"This is pretty peaceful. Nothing like the chaos back in Saint-Rémont," Didier said, taking in his surroundings.
Oddly enough, the sky remained wrapped in thick grey clouds, though no rain had fallen yet. Along the tracks, the grass around the houses glowed an unusually vivid green, and the breeze grew so mild that the coats they wore had already started feeling like too much.
"Somehow, this has turned out beautiful," Antonie remarked, filling his lungs with air.
The scent of damp earth refreshed his senses, filling him with a vitality he hadn't felt in some time. Alphard drew a deep breath too, savoring the clean air before they set off toward the ruins. Still, the mud accumulated along the path ended up ruining the shine of his once-immaculate shoes.
Doesn't matter, Alphard thought as they walked on. To him, this stretch of train ride and walking amounted to little more than the trip between Tokyo and Kawasaki.
They kept walking until they came across an old man standing at a street corner.
"Good afternoon, sir. Could you tell us where to find the Rocheval District?" Didier asked.
The old man studied them with open skepticism, arching an eyebrow, wary.
"And who might you be?"
"We're a group of believers," Antonie answered, keeping his tone solemn and measured.
"Of the Goddess?"
"That's right, sir. Faithful servants of the Goddess."
"In that case, don't bother me," the old man replied bitterly. "I'm a believer of the Spiritual Goddess. We're the ones who hold the true gospel and worship the true goddess."
While Antonie and Didier seemed to grasp the distinction, a question struck Alphard.
Could this, at its core, be the same deity, worshipped under different doctrinal branches? Something similar to what happened back on Earth between Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians.
Noticing the old man wasn't about to offer another word, the three of them decided not to press further and moved on. They walked unhurried through the narrow, connected streets, studying the façades to match the intersections against their map.
"We need to head toward the center, to the town hall," Antonie mentioned, pointing to a spot on the paper. "Using the town hall as a reference point should make it easy to orient ourselves toward Rocheval."
They followed the main avenue in a straight line until it opened onto the town square.
Unlike the narrower streets before, the surroundings here felt more spacious and tidy, flanked by stone arcades housing apothecaries, notary offices, and small provincial cafés.
At the far end of the square stood the mayor's palace: a solid neoclassical structure built from grey stone and fired brick. Its façade boasted a wide granite staircase leading to a double-leaf door of dark oak, flanked by columns of restrained design. Set into the upper cornice, a modest clock tower marked time with a slow, tired metallic rhythm, while Fercluse's institutional banner fluttered atop the peak.
Having located their route on the map, they hailed a carriage to take them straight to Rocheval. They hadn't done so earlier since carriages ran scarce in that area, most of them already occupied. The ride ran longer than expected: the city streets gradually gave way to a solitary rural countryside, sunk in silence.
In the distance, perched atop a hill in the middle of nowhere, a single structure rose against the sky. Spotting it, they had the driver stop and stepped down, paying him five cents for the length of the trip.
"That the ruins?" Didier asked, shading his eyes with a hand.
"Can't say for certain, but from here, it sure looks like it," Antonie answered. "I'd bet that's exactly what it is."
The three of them advanced across the grass with caution. Despite the distance, the structure radiated a colossal, imposing presence. As they closed in, the visual impact grew overwhelming; a strange vibration hung in the air, thick, heavy, almost suffocating.
Their breathing quickened involuntarily, but none of them buckled beneath the sheer weight of the place. They pressed forward with steady, if unhurried, steps.
This was no simple ruin — it was an ancestral temple.
The structure held multiple entrances swallowed in shadow, vaulted corridors, and deep galleries where sunlight never managed to reach.
Lifting his gaze, the vaulted ceiling revealed a painting of sublime, terrifying beauty. Angels, humans, demons, and dragons converged in a dramatic spiral around a central figure: a god with a golden beard and curled hair falling over his shoulders.
His stare carried an unfathomable misery, and he sat enthroned atop a heaped mass of hands, each covered in weeping eyes. Above the whole tableau of torment floated the silhouette of a key. His eyes were shut with such profound depth that he seemed sunk into an eternal sleep.
Alphard felt his stomach lurch. To him, this wasn't a simple visual painting at all; it felt as though he were reading some ancient text etched into the very air. His heart began racing wildly.
"What is this...?" he murmured under his breath.
Along the side walls, more murals unfolded, and directly ahead, an enormous carved symbol stood out: a key without a lock.
"I recognize this," Alphard said, stepping forward.
"From where?" Antonie asked, turning toward him.
"My sister's friend wore a necklace with that exact same lockless key. That day, she had this strange attitude about her... though I couldn't say for sure. She's usually just a bit peculiar."
"Maybe she's just an ancient history buff," Didier offered, dismissing the concern.
Alphard chose to stay quiet. Antonie suggested they press on with the inspection, and the group resumed walking. But as they sank deeper into the temple's darkness, a horrifying chill began creeping up Alphard's spine.
It's probably just because this place is so overwhelming.
As they pushed further into the temple's depths, the darkness grew nearly absolute, thick as a mass of ink. Luckily, Antonie pulled out a wooden rod fitted with a candle and lit it with a match; the weak flame wasn't enough to banish the total blackness, but it gave them just enough sight to avoid walking blind.
Bringing the light closer to the walls, the stonework revealed rows of deeply carved script belonging to no known era.
"This... this is the tongue of our ancestors," Antonie whispered, his face a mix of shock and fascination. "One of the earliest languages spoken by the tribes of the Third Period."
Though the markings were indecipherable, they carried a rigorous geometry and an undeniable syntactic order: not random scrawls, but a structured, ancient language.
Suddenly, a jolt of memory struck Alphard. He recalled the pages of the original Alphard's diary, describing an incursion into some forgotten ruins.
The entry had never specified the exact location, nor what lay inside; it had focused solely on describing the crushing, suffocating presence that pressed down on anyone who set foot there. The same unbearable sensation now beginning to close in around them.
Without warning, a fierce, searing pressure gripped Alphard's chest. The pain was sharp enough to threaten to steal the breath from his lungs; still, he clenched his jaw and held back any outward sign, keeping his face locked in a cold, impassive calm.
Neither of his companions noticed the torment eating away at him from within.
They continued deeper into the darkness until the passage opened onto a colossal wall.
The stone was covered from end to end in an extensive inscription. Though it belonged to a language a couple of millennia more recent, it differed noticeably from the one carved into the earlier walls.
Antonie brought the candle close to the engravings and, after a long stretch of careful study, managed to decipher a handful of fragmented lines:
I am the God of Beasts, Father of Misery, and rightful heir to the Divine Throne that rules over reality. Whoever reads these words, and finds themselves bound to my path, shall be the one to find me and free me from this forgotten door.
"It's almost like a god trying to escape. Given how long this place has been sitting here, this must be some kind of lost god," Didier said, working toward a conclusion.
The stale reek of millennia-old rubble, damp earth, and corroded metal slipped like a needle into Alphard's nostrils, triggering a wave of dizziness and nausea that threatened to bring him down. To his bewilderment, Antonie and Didier kept examining the carvings as though nothing were wrong, entirely immune to the poisonous atmosphere seeming to crush his lungs.
Why can't they sense any of this? Why does this brutal pull keep dragging me toward one of the darkened entrances? Why do I have this feeling that crossing it will finally give me the answer?
Suddenly, the temple's stillness began to fracture. A viscous, distorted murmur pierced Alphard's eardrums, clawing at his mind with the single purpose of cracking his sanity and dragging him into delirium. They were bodiless echoes hissing straight from the darkness itself:
"Alphard... Alphard... Alphard... Come here... He's calling for you..."
Pressing his fingers to his forehead to contain the stabbing pain and the storm of voices threatening to tear a scream out of him, Alphard took a step back, doing his best to hide the collapse of his own senses.
"I'm going to look around a bit through another path. Once we're done, let's meet up outside... sound good?"
"Sure thing!" the two of them answered in unison, absorbed in the wall, not noticing the corpse-like pallor draining from his face.