Chapter 40 - Shadows of the Past

  As the sun dipped below the skyline, casting long shadows over the twisted ruins of the city, Raven knew it was time to turn back. The memory of his last venture into these streets at night was still fresh—when the darkness whispered to him, when unseen predators had lurked just out of sight. He had no desire to repeat that experience, especially after the battle with the wind-wielding wolf.

  “We should head back,” he said, glancing at the sky. The clouds, tinged with the last light of day, were already shifting toward an eerie twilight. “Nightfall in this part of town isn’t exactly safe.”

  Uri smirked but nodded. “Finally showing some sense?”

  Raven rolled his eyes, and Carlos chuckled. Together, they made their way back toward the hospital, retracing their path through the tangled streets. The way back felt longer, the silence of the approaching night pressing down on them, making the ruins seem even more desolate.

  By the time they reached the hospital, the plaza was already settling into its evening routine. People were heading inside, finishing up their meals, securing doors and windows against the uncertainty of the night. The glow from the ether-powered lanterns cast warm pools of light against the walls, creating an illusion of security.

  At the hospital steps, they paused.

  “Well,” Carlos stretched, rolling his shoulders. “That was one hell of a training session.”

  Uri nodded. “You both did well. If you keep reflecting on what makes you you, your abilities will continue to grow. Ether responds to identity—don’t forget that.”

  Raven smirked. “You make it sound like a philosophy lesson.”

  Uri grinned. “Because it is. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a meal waiting for me.”

  Carlos gave a tired laugh. “Yeah, same.”

  Raven hesitated for a moment before giving her a genuine nod. “Thanks, Uri. For everything.”

  She waved him off with a dismissive flick of her wrist. “Just don’t die. It’d be a waste.”

  With that, they split up. Carlos wandered toward the cafeteria, likely in search of food, while Uri disappeared into the depths of the hospital. Raven, however, found his steps slowing.

  Something gnawed at him, a lingering discomfort—not from the training, not even from the fight with the wolf, but from something Uri had said earlier.

  The seal had been beneath the construction site.

  The construction site where his parents had died.

  Raven's stomach twisted. He hadn’t thought about that place in years—not in detail. Not since he was a kid.

  A flash of memory overtook him.

  The school bell had rung, and Raven had grabbed his bag, already thinking about heading home. His mum had promised to take him out for dinner that night. She’d been working long shifts, but she had said she’d make the time.

  But instead of her car waiting at the curb, it was Darryl.

  Raven had known instantly that something was wrong.

  Darryl had never picked him up from school. Not once. His dads best friend—stood stiffly near the car, hands shoved into his jacket pockets. His face was pale, his expression unreadable.

  Raven had barely climbed into the passenger seat when he asked, “Where’s Mum?”

  Darryl didn’t answer right away. He started driving first, taking a slow breath.

  Then, in a voice too careful, too measured, he said, “Something terrible happened today.”

  Raven’s world stopped.

  He barely remembered the drive home. The next thing he knew, they were in the living room, and a man in a suit—a lawyer—was sitting across from him, his expression filled with the kind of sympathy that made Raven’s stomach churn.

  “There was an accident at the construction site,” the man explained, voice soft, too soft. “A gas pocket was exposed during excavation. It ignited. There was… there was an explosion.”

  Raven felt numb.

  “The site collapsed. Your parents—”

  He didn’t hear the rest. He barely registered the details, barely noticed when Darryl put a hand on his shoulder, or when the lawyer started explaining things about the house, about a trust, about what would happen next.

  Nothing mattered.

  The words felt distant, unimportant.

  His parents were gone.

  He was alone.

  He was an orphan.

  Raven let out a shaky breath, dragging himself back to the present.

  The hospital halls felt colder now, quieter. The echoes of his footsteps followed him as he walked, his mind still lingering in the past.

  Was it really just an accident? Or had that seal—whatever it had been holding back—played a part in his parents’ deaths?

  Raven clenched his fists.

  For the first time in years, he felt like he needed answers.

  The night air was cool against Raven’s skin as he slipped through the hospital gates, nodding at the guards who gave him wary glances.

  “Be careful out there,” one of them muttered, shifting his grip on his crossbow.

  Raven gave a short nod before stepping into the empty streets, the flickering lanterns from the wall behind him quickly swallowed by the encroaching darkness.

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  The city at night was quieter than he expected. No chittering goblins lurking in alleyways, no rustling of scaled bodies moving through ruined buildings. It was as if the world itself was holding its breath. He knew better than to think it was safe—if anything, it was worse. It meant something bigger was out there, hunting in the shadows.

  But tonight, they weren’t his concern.

  He moved quickly, navigating through the crumbling cityscape with ease. The path was familiar—the abandoned building where he had first woken up in this twisted version of the world wasn’t far from his destination. As he approached, the skeletal remains of the half-built research centre came into view.

  The construction site had once been a grand project. He remembered hearing about it before the world changed—some excavation meant to study ancient relics buried beneath the valley, ruins from the time before recorded history.

  Then the accident happened.

  A gas explosion, or at least that was what they had called it. The project had been halted indefinitely, the thousands of workers reassigned or sent home, and the area was left to rot. Now, all that remained was a single, rusted warehouse standing alone in a sea of emptiness.

  Raven took his time approaching, scanning the perimeter. The earth was uneven, as if something had tried to reclaim the land, patches of wild grass growing between jagged cracks in the concrete. The remains of steel frames jutted out of the ground like broken ribs, casting eerie shadows in the moonlight.

  It was exactly as he remembered.

  Too exactly.

  Everything else in the city had changed. The streets were overgrown, nature had surged back with the return of ether. But this place? It looked untouched.

  That didn’t sit right with him.

  He stepped forward, boots crunching against loose gravel. A single warehouse remained at the centre of the site, rusted and forgotten.

  He felt something.

  It wasn’t a noise, not a movement—just a presence, lingering beneath his skin like static before a storm.

  His fingers twitched towards his dagger.

  This place wasn’t empty.

  It never had been.

  Raven approached the warehouse, the lone structure standing in defiance of time and decay. The closer he got, the stronger the hum beneath his skin became. Ether. Not just lingering traces, but something active. The entire area thrummed with it, subtle but undeniable.

  Something was here. Something was still here.

  Keeping his footsteps light, he circled the building, scanning for a window, a crack, any sign of entry. But there was nothing. No windows. No doors except the massive rusted one at the front, bolted shut with reinforced steel.

  That was weird.

  What kind of building didn’t have windows?

  His first instinct was to phase through—but as he stepped forward and reached for that familiar pull of ether within himself… nothing happened.

  Raven staggered back, eyes narrowing.

  What the hell?

  His breath caught. He tried again. Nothing.

  For the first time since awakening his trait, he felt trapped in his own skin.

  That was impossible.

  Nothing had stopped him from phasing before.

  A feeling of unease crept up his spine. He took a deep breath, forcing himself to stay calm. There had to be another way in.

  Stepping back from the warehouse, he scanned the surrounding area, looking for anything out of place. That was when he noticed it—a sewage grate, half-buried in overgrowth, the metal rusted but intact.

  It was a long shot, but right now it was his only lead.

  Gripping the heavy grate, he strained against the metal until it groaned and shifted, the weight of years giving way under his determination. With a final grunt, he pulled it free and set it aside, peering down into the darkness below. A metal service ladder descended into a cramped tunnel.

  Raven climbed down, his boots echoing lightly against the steel rungs.

  The tunnel was tight, forcing him to crouch as he moved forward. The air was thick, damp, carrying the faint metallic tang of rust and stagnant water. He pressed on, following the general direction of the warehouse above.

  Minutes passed. The tunnel stretched ahead, then finally opened into a junction, splitting into three different directions.

  Raven hesitated.

  Left, right, or straight ahead?

  A flicker of movement caught his eye—a disturbance in the shadows to his left. He turned his head, spotting a cutout in the tunnel wall.

  Narrowing his eyes, he approached cautiously.

  As he neared, he realized it wasn’t just an alcove—it led somewhere. Embedded in the tunnel wall was a solid metal door.

  What the hell?

  A door. Reinforced. Locked.

  His gut screamed at him—this wasn’t just a storage area. It was built to keep something out... or in.

  He hesitated, then pressed his hand to the metal and phased through.

  This time, it worked.

  Raven phased effortlessly, stepping through the metal and into the unknown.

  The room he entered wasn’t a basement or a sewer access point. It was something else entirely.

  A facility.

  The air was stale, untouched. Against one wall, a row of dead computers sat in eerie silence, their screens dark. Cables ran along the ground, leading to circuits and panels that looked complex, even advanced.

  On the opposite wall, a large reinforced window looked out over a massive chamber. Steel platforms lined the perimeter, staircases leading downward into the heart of the room. He couldn’t see what lay below, but the sheer scale of it sent a shiver through him.

  This wasn’t just a research site.

  This was something else.

  Turning, he noticed something on the wall behind him.

  A symbol.

  It looked familiar—almost identical to the ones etched into the constructs back at the hospital. But this one was damaged, cracked, as if something had struck it with immense force.

  Raven’s breath slowed.

  Whatever this place was… something had happened here.

  Something big.

  And it wasn’t meant to be found.

  Someone had hidden it.

  Raven’s mind raced. Someone had known about ether long before the Reckoning, before Asmodeus’s vision, before the world had been thrown into chaos.

  Someone had studied it.

  And someone had hidden it.

  The scale of what he was seeing confirmed that this wasn’t some minor operation. The infrastructure, the sheer depth of the facility—it all pointed to something far bigger than he had ever imagined. An organization with power. Money. Influence.

  Had they created the seals Uri spoke of?

  Had they caused all of this?

  He needed to know more.

  But as that realization set in, so did something else—a low, creeping fear.

  Something had damaged that door.

  Something that hadn’t made it through the steel door, it was likely still inside.

  His fingers tightened around his dagger as he moved forward, careful to keep his steps light. The deeper he went; the more signs of ether use he found. Symbols were carved into the walls, into doors—some still intact, glowing with faint pulses of energy, while others were cracked, worn, their power long since faded.

  This wasn’t just a research site. This was an experiment.

  Some rooms looked dead—lifeless machines, screens dark and cracked. But others hummed, faint but alive, like something had been keeping them running all this time.

  Storage containers identical to the ones he had seen in the shop—designed to hold ether, to store it—lined the walls of various rooms. Many had been drained, their contents used up, but some still hummed with power, faint and pulsing like dying embers. Runes surrounded them, inscribed in meticulous patterns, powering the remnants of whatever machines had once operated here.

  Then, at the lowest point of the facility, he found it.

  A staircase.

  It led deeper—underground.

  Raven swallowed, moving with deliberate silence as he began his descent. Each step took him further into the unknown, the air thickening, the pressure mounting. Ether pulsed around him in waves, wrong somehow—denser, heavier.

  He reached the last step—and stopped.

  A cavern stretched before him, vast and yawning, swallowing all light. But in the centre.

  His breath hitched. He had seen ether sink stones before. But nothing like this.

  In the very centre of the cavern sat a crystal.

  A hundred times larger than the one at the hospital.

  It loomed over everything, its surface cracked, raw ether pouring from it in thick, tangible waves. The sheer pressure of it made Raven’s head swim, nausea twisting in his gut. He had never felt anything like it.

  It was alive.

  And surrounding it were four pillars, arranged in a perfect square, covered in runes that connected in intricate patterns.

  A seal.

  Or at least—it had been a seal.

  One section of the runes had been scorched away, as if something had torn through it deliberately.

  This is it, Raven thought, his stomach twisting. This is what broke.

  The damage was new, the edges of the ruins blackened, the scoured section still radiating residual energy. He didn’t know when it had been destroyed, or how, but he knew one thing for certain.

  This was no accident.

  And whoever had done it had unleashed a power that was changing the very fabric of the world.