The air in the stone chamber was cold and heavy. The patterns covering the walls flickered faintly in the torchlight. An unknown pattern system that couldn't be read by standard geomancy—Elara traced the complex web of lines with her eyes while feeling anew how different the air in the temple's depths was from the world outside. The sensation of her feet touching the ground felt distant. The stone's chill crawled up from the soles of her feet. The core of Arathun's seal. She had come this far. When Elara braced herself to face the third trial, Arius didn't move. With his back to them both, he stared at a single point on the wall. His long silver hair swayed in the faint air current. Elara already understood that the translucent quality of his skin wasn't merely an effect of the stone chamber's light. It was after a long silence that Arius finally spoke. A low, quiet voice. Ancient pronunciation with unfamiliar sounds wove through modern Eldorian. "...The trials are over." He said only that, without turning around. Elara exchanged a glance with Orion. Orion reflexively pulled out his notebook. As an apprentice archaeologist of the Solenia Stele Institute (Arca Schola)—a scholar certified in geomancy and ruin research—it was his habit to document everything during expeditions. The instinctive impulse to record. But Elara gently shook her head. Not now. Orion hesitated for a moment, then closed his notebook. His fingers touched the frame of his glasses—his usual gesture. Still, he nodded properly. Without saying it, he showed that he trusted Elara's intuition. Both of them turned their full attention to Arius's voice. "I will speak of what happened 800 years ago." * Arathun had crumbled from within—so Arius told them. The most forbidden application of geomancy: the sealing art (Signa Crouze). A technique that covered space itself with geomantic patterns, isolating it from the outside world. Arathun's engineers had sought to use this for the city's defense. Not as an external seal, but as an internal application. When the chain of spatial distortions caused by that experiment began to consume the entire city, the Council of Elders was forced to make a choice. "The city itself would become the vessel of the seal. It was the only option." His voice was matter-of-fact. As if 800 years had stripped away all emotion from his words. Yet because of that, each word resonated as if seeping into the stone chamber's walls. "One designated as the Eternal Vigilant—Aeterna Vigil—would bear the core of the seal. In exchange for the sealing art, an immortal body. And the constraint of never being able to leave the object of protection." Orion held his breath sharply. "At that time, I was Arathun's youngest geomancer." Arius finally turned around slowly. His amber eyes looked at them both. 800 years of solitude seeped from them, yet they held a quiet, resigned color. "I had a family. I had friends. I had someone I loved." There was a long silence between his words. "I sent them into an alternate dimensional refuge. Leaving only myself behind." "...Are they still..." "On the other side, waiting with time stopped." Those words filled the stone chamber. Elara's fingertips unconsciously reached toward the bag containing the map. She didn't move it. But her fingers stopped on the fabric. Orion, while looking at the patterns carved into the wall, slowly placed his left hand on his own arm. The arm that had been wounded in the temple's collapse. As if confirming the pain, or confirming his own existence here. His face showed someone experiencing 800 years of time in their body for the first time. * As he spoke, Arius placed one hand against the wall. The moment Elara saw it, she sensed something was wrong. That smooth motion—the water-like bearing that made almost no sound—was now slightly heavy. "I am pouring my life force into maintaining the seal." Arius removed his hand from the wall and stood straight. Elara could tell it was a forced posture, as if he were acting. "The eternal body is being consumed from within. The cost of maintaining the seal grows with each passing year. Beyond approximately 50 kilometers from Arathun, I weaken rapidly—and that tolerance limit is now certainly shrinking." Orion pushed his glasses up. His voice rose slightly with tension. "In other words, the seal is weakening." Arius didn't deny it. Orion's face went pale. The warning inscribed in the temple that he had read—the Great Disappearance (Vanari Cors), the fracture of geomancy, the calamity sealed within the city—all of it now connected with Arius's words. If the seal weakened, then what was sealed within would— "I don't know how many more years it will hold." Quietly, Arius said this. Elara looked at Arius's appearance again. His features seemed to be in his mid-thirties. But now, depending on the angle of the light, his skin appeared so translucent. As if his very existence were gradually becoming thinner. 800 years, alone in this place. As the linchpin of the seal, never revealing it to anyone, simply pouring himself into it endlessly. (This person has been alone here all this time.) Something in the center of Elara's chest ached quietly, seeping through her. * Arius's narration paused slightly. In the silence, the patterns on the stone chamber's walls swayed in the torchlight. Orion adjusted the bag containing preserved food, a small sound. His face showed he had only now realized they hadn't eaten at all due to the trials' exhaustion and tension. A faint rumbling sound. Orion's stomach. Orion froze. His ears turned red visibly. Elara took preserved food from her bag and handed it to Orion without a word. "...Thank you." Quietly. As he took it, his expression was somewhat at a loss. He hadn't expected his stomach to growl at a moment like this—his face said exactly that. Arius didn't turn around. But the air around his back changed slightly. The being wrapped in 800 years of solitude, in this single moment, seemed to wrap itself in something else. An air close to a rueful laugh, without words. The moment when the utterly mundane, hopelessly human quality of everyday life returned to the stone chamber—that was what his back conveyed. "It was about ten years ago." Arius spoke again. His tone of voice didn't change. But somehow, just slightly, it was lighter than before. "A single cartographer noticed the seal's weakening. Someone with aptitude in geomancy who had reached the outer edges of the ruins alone." "...What was her name?" Elara's voice came out. Without her even realizing it. "Evelyn Casta." Everything stopped. Her grandmother's name came from the mouth of one who had lived 800 years. It was as if the stone chamber's cold air had penetrated beneath Elara's skin. No—not beneath her skin, but deeper, past her lungs, into that inner place. Her breath caught for a beat, then resumed. "Evelyn...?" Orion whispered. Frozen beside Elara, still holding the preserved food. Evelyn Casta—Elara's grandmother, the cartographer who had submitted Arathun-related papers to the Solenia Stele Institute 45 years ago only to have them rejected—that name changed the air in the stone chamber. "She devised a plan to nurture someone with the aptitude necessary to repair the seal, and guide them here through maps." Arius continued. "Geomantic ink—the special magical ink used to inscribe geomantic patterns—normally loses its power after 200 years. That your map has maintained its response for over 800 years is because your grandmother applied knowledge of the sealing art in a special way to fix the magical power in place." Fragments began to take shape, one by one. The map hidden in the attic. The Arathun-related papers her grandmother had submitted to the Solenia Stele Institute 45 years ago, only to be rejected. The fundamentals of geomancy deliberately taught to her since childhood. The crescent-shaped mark on her left cheek—the stain from when she had knocked over a bottle of geomantic ink that day—which Evelyn had laughed and wiped away while saying, "This suits you." All the fragments now took on a single outline in this moment. Tears spilled from Elara's eyes. She couldn't control it. By the time she noticed, they were already running down her cheeks. Elara, who almost never cried in front of others—who had never done so through all her stories—was crying in the stone chamber, before the guardian, before her childhood friend. Orion reflexively stepped toward Elara. His feet moved before his words could. He said nothing. He simply stood beside her. It was only afterward that Orion realized this. That his body had moved before he could think. * Elara wiped her eyes with her sleeve. She turned to Arius and asked. Her voice didn't tremble. "What is needed for the repair?" Arius didn't answer immediately. He looked at Elara's face for a while. In his gaze, something mixed together. Memory of a former companion, and something more complex—a relief at finally seeing that weight reflected in someone else's eyes. A being who had carried that burden alone for 800 years, finally witnessing it in another's gaze, and the indescribable emotion of that moment. "Your grandmother chose the right person." Low and quiet, Arius said this. Those words moved something deep within Elara's chest. Until now, the impulse to "know" had been the only fuel for her forward motion. To solve the mystery of the terrain, to decipher what her grandmother had left behind, to learn the truth of Arathun—that was the entirety of her reason. But in this moment, Elara felt that impulse being restructured. Not to guard in order to know, but—to know in order to guard. It was a transformation that brought pain. Using the pure thirst for inquiry itself for the first time for something's "sake." But that weight wasn't something to flee from. * Orion, while gazing at the patterns carved into the wall, was organizing his inner self. While Elara focused on her dialogue with Arius, he remained alone in the corner of the stone chamber. Two years as an apprentice archaeologist (Arca Schola) of the Solenia Stele Institute. The anxiety of proving himself against the accomplishments he'd built as the third son of an academic family. Proof against his brothers. Those had been the fuel driving him this far. But in this moment, that weight was rapidly becoming smaller. (Why am I here?) In violation of the ruin closure order—the law prohibiting unauthorized entry into ruins related to the Great Disappearance. Risking his credentials as an apprentice archaeologist. Wounded in the arm by the collapse. Yet still beside Elara. There was only one answer. "I'll do this with you." Orion said it quietly. Not as a confession to Elara. No one had asked him. It was simply an answer to a question he'd posed to himself, becoming words. Elara turned around. Their gazes met. Orion's blue-gray eyes and Elara's brown eyes. The torch swayed, and their shadows stretched across the wall. "Because you're beside me, I'm not afraid." Elara said it. Unusually direct. Not in her usual contemplative tone, not as a question. Simply as words, as they were. Orion's glasses slipped slightly. He hurriedly pushed them back up. His ears were red again. This time it wasn't because of the preserved food. Arius watched that scene quietly. Then turned his gaze elsewhere—toward the wall where Arathun's seal was inscribed, into the darkness beyond. What he saw there, no one could know. But on his profile, there floated the memory of those he had sent away 800 years ago, and toward the youth of these two present here, something wordless and warm. Something like resignation, yet not resignation alone. * "I will tell you the method of repair." Arius returned to the center of the stone chamber. The city crest on the back of his hand—the glowing pattern inscribed by Arathun's sealing art—shi