Sealed Garden of Gods

Chapter 6- Southern Needle

The sun... if there even was a sun in this forsaken place didn't move. The sky stayed that same bruised, flat gray, making it impossible to tell if I’d been walking for hours or days. My legs ached with a deep, throbbing heat, but the rest of me felt cold.

I was lost.

I’d thought I was making progress, but Aldenora was a lie. I’d been walking through streets for miles, but all I saw was the same repetitive rot. Row after row of houses that must have belonged to the common folk. They were cramped, leaning against each other like tired old men, their roofs caved in and their windows staring at me like empty eye sockets.

There were no grand palaces here. No golden gardens or ivory halls. Just a sea of shattered stone and gray dust that went on forever. If this was a kingdom of Gods, then the Gods lived in slums just like the rest of us.

"I haven't even moved an inch, have I?" I muttered, stopping to lean against a wall.

The wall groaned. A layer of plaster peeled off and turned to mist before it hit the ground. I pulled my hand back, afraid I’d bring the whole block down.

I looked up, squinting against the dim light. Far off in the distance, poking through the low-hanging clouds, were the four towers. They were the only things that looked solid in this world of ash. They stood at the four corners of the horizon, massive and sharp, like needles stitching the earth to the sky.

I didn't know their names. I didn't know what they were for. But they were the only landmarks I had. I looked to the one on my left the South Tower, I called it, mostly just to give my mind something to hold onto. It looked the closest, though in this mist, "close" could still mean a day’s march.

"The South Tower," I rasped. "Go there. Get high up. See the world."

The ghosts didn't answer, but the weight on my shoulders shifted, a heavy pressure that made my neck stiff. They were pushing me. Or maybe it was just my own mind cracking under the pressure of the silence.

I started walking again. The streets here were a labyrinth. Sometimes a path would just end in a mountain of rubble that was too tall to climb and too fragile to touch. I had to double back, winding through narrow alleys where the air smelled like ancient, dried-up death.

Every time I turned a corner, that feeling came back.

Someone is watching.

I’d spin around, my rusted dagger held out, but there was never anything there. Just the slow, tumbling fall of dust. But I could feel the eyes. They weren't just one pair. It felt like the very walls had eyes, like the souls of the people who died here were trapped in the cracks of the stone, watching the only living thing crawl through their graveyard.

I passed a small square with a dried-up well. On the edge of the well, there were three small piles of white dust, arranged in a neat row. They looked like... people. Like three people had sat there, side by side, and simply disintegrated where they sat.

I looked at the piles, and for a second, I saw them.

Vax, sitting on the left, tossing his stone. Elian in the middle, staring at his hands. Borg on the right, watching the horizon.

I blinked, and the image was gone. Just three piles of gray ash.

"Get out of my head," I snarled, my voice echoing too loudly. "You're dead. Stay dead."

The silver mark on my hand flared with a cold, biting light. It hurt—a sharp, stinging pain that made me drop to my knees. The mark didn't like it when I talked to the ghosts. It wanted me to keep moving. It wanted me to be the vessel.

I forced myself up, my breath coming in ragged gasps. The South Tower was closer now. I could see the detail on its surface. It wasn't made of the same white marble as the rest of the city. It was made of a dark, obsidian-like stone that seemed to drink what little light there was. There were no windows, just a spiral of carvings that wound all the way to the top.

The closer I got, the more the city seemed to pull away from the tower. The houses near its base were flattened, turned into a smooth plain of gray grit. It was like the tower was a magnet, and it had sucked the life out of everything around it.

I reached the base of the tower. It was massive—wide enough to hold a small village inside. There was a single opening at the bottom, a triangular door that looked like it had been cut out with a single, giant blow.

I stood at the entrance, looking into the darkness.

"Is anyone there?" I called out.

The echo came back, but it sounded distorted. It didn't sound like my voice. It sounded like a choir of a thousand people whispering my name at once.

I stepped inside.

The air was different here. It wasn't dusty. It was cold—so cold that my breath came out in thick white clouds. The walls were covered in a faint, silver frost. In the center of the room, a spiral staircase made of translucent glass wound upward into the dark.

I started to climb.

The stairs were narrow and had no railing. One slip, and I’d be a red smear on the black floor below. I kept my eyes on my feet, counting the steps.

One hundred. Two hundred. Five hundred.

My lungs were burning. The air was getting thinner. The mark on my hand was glowing brighter now, casting a pale blue light against the frost-covered walls. As I climbed, I started to see things in the frost.

Faces.

They weren't clear, but they were there. Thousands of faces, trapped beneath the ice, their mouths open in silent screams. They were the remnants. The souls of the people who couldn't leave, frozen in the moment the Garden was sealed.

I tried to ignore them. I tried to think about the view from the top. I’d see the castle. I’d see the way out. I’d see the truth.

But the higher I went, the more the feeling of being watched changed. It wasn't coming from behind me anymore. It was coming from above.

I reached a small landing, about halfway up the tower. There was a narrow slit in the wall, a window that looked out over the city. I stumbled toward it, desperate for a look at the world.

I looked out, and my heart stopped.

The ruins didn't end.

From this height, I could see for miles. It wasn't a kingdom. It was a wound. A massive, circular crater filled with the bones of a civilization. And beyond the crater, the mist of the Rofnar forest was circling us like a giant, gray snake.

But that wasn't the worst part.

Down in the streets I had just walked, I saw them. Shadows. Thousands of them, moving slowly through the ruins. They weren't spiders. They were shapes of men and women, made of gray smoke and silver light. They were wandering aimlessly, touching the walls, sitting in the dust.

The remnants.

I wasn't alone in this city. I was just the only one who could still feel the weight of a body.

"They're all here," I whispered, my forehead pressed against the cold stone. "Everyone who ever lived here... they never left."

A soft, scraping sound came from the stairs above me.

I froze. I didn't turn around. I didn't reach for my dagger. I just stood there, looking out at the graveyard of a world.

"Kyle Rezel," a voice rasped. It was the same voice from the bridge. The one that sounded like grinding stones.

I turned slowly.

Standing on the stairs above me was a figure. It was tall, draped in rags that might have been silk once. Its face was hidden behind a mask made of cracked porcelain, shaped into a weeping eye. It didn't have a body—just a swirl of silver mist held together by the rags.

It held a long, rusted staff in its hand, and on the top of the staff was a single, glowing blue crystal.

"Why do you... climb?" the figure asked.

"I want to see," I said, my voice shaking. "I want to know why this place is dead."

The figure tilted its head. The porcelain mask creaked. "It is not dead. it is... waiting. And you... are the first guest we have had in a very, very long time."

The figure raised its staff, and the blue crystal flared with a blinding light.

"But the Garden... does not like... guests."

The floor beneath my feet groaned. The glass stairs began to crack.

"Wait!" I shouted.

But the figure was already gone, vanishing into the frost of the walls. The landing began to tilt, the obsidian stone crumbling away into the abyss below.

I lunged for the stairs, my fingers clawing at the ice.

I had to get to the top. I had to see what was in the center of the crater.

Because as the light from the staff faded, I saw it. In the very center of the ruins, hidden behind a veil of silver clouds, was a castle that didn't look like it was made of stone.

It looked like it was made of light.

And it was calling to the mark on my hand.