I had already made my way to the small shrine at the edge of my territory.
It was somewhat like ancient ruins.
The stone walls were perfectly shaped and cemented, complementing the shrine's unique structure. Despite what must have been centuries of exposure to the Jura Forest's damp and relentless growth, the stonework had endured with a stubbornness that spoke of craftsmanship far beyond anything the current era seemed capable of producing.
"It must be from a long time ago…"
I muttered, running my fingers along the surface of the nearest wall. The stone was cold and slightly damp from the swamp air, but solid. No crumbling at the edges. No visible structural compromise anywhere.
"The best part is that there aren't any signs indicating it's active or functional… If it were, I could have been in great trouble with the fanatics!"
Fanatics were always a pain.
The type who would do anything for their shallow understanding of a belief they had processed into something absolute — who would treat a shrine like this as sacred ground and its accidental new neighbor, which is me, as either a convert or a target.
I had walked miles away from fanatics of every variety in my previous life and had no intention of changing that policy in this one.
Anyhow.
I stepped inside through the ruined entrance. The door itself was long gone, leaving only the frame, its stone worn smooth where hands had touched it repeatedly over what must have been generations.
The inside wasn't spacious.
Narrow, in a way that felt deliberate rather than accidental. Serene, even. The kind of narrowness that focused attention forward rather than letting it wander.
If I were to measure it, roughly two or three slim men could pass through simultaneously.
The light that entered from the ruined doorway behind me stretched only so far before the interior swallowed it, leaving the deeper sections in a dimness that wasn't quite darkness.It was more like the forest's filtered light, coming from sources I couldn't immediately identify.
Moving forward, I gazed vigilantly at the walls on either side.
Illustrations of many kinds hung along the rough stone perimeters at irregular intervals — not painted directly onto the wall but mounted, framed in the same dark grey stone as the structure itself, as if they had been made to exist here specifically.
"What the hell does it even portray?"
I leaned closer to the nearest one.
The illustration style was unlike anything I had seen. It certainly wasn't the clean linework of current-era cartography or the stylized imagery of cultivation manuals. It felt ancient. More symbolic than representational, as if the artist assumed the viewer would already understand the language being conveyed — which made the communication feel distinctly one-sided.
The first illustration showed a figure standing at the center of a circle. Around the circle, seven shapes.. I couldn't tell if they were people or something else... faced inward toward the central figure with their arms extended upward.
The second showed what appeared to be a forest. But the trees in it were somehow wrong — creepy and unnervingly serene at the same time. Too tall. Too uniform. Arranged in patterns that no natural forest would ever produce on its own. And at the center of that too-perfect forest, something glowed. I couldn't tell what. Whatever the artist had intended to depict there, the centuries had worn the center of the illustration down into an ambiguity that felt almost deliberate.
Then there was another one, set slightly apart from the others at the edge of the wall.
This one was simpler than the rest in its composition but considerably more disturbing in its content.
At the center of what appeared to be an altar stood children — small figures, unmistakably young, positioned with the stiff formality of subjects rather than participants. Around them, arranged in concentric rings that pressed inward with visible hunger, were figures of every variety.
Beasts.
Creatures I had no name for.
And humans — their postures identical to the beasts surrounding them, their faces carrying the same expression of absolute, consuming desire.
No distinction between predator and fanatic. No line between hunger and worship.
"What a twisted atrocity…"
The word escaped before I could find a better one. It wasn't quite right, but it was the closest I had.
I stepped back from that illustration deliberately and continued forward.
The narrow path drew me deeper into the shrine's interior, the filtered dimness thickening slightly with each step. The air here was different — cooler, stiller, carrying the particular quality of a space that had been sealed from the world's weather for a very long time and had developed its own internal atmosphere as a result.
And then I saw it.
A statue, cemented in a grandiose form, stood directly ahead of me, dominating the end of the narrow passage the way a period dominates the end of a sentence — the entire structure pointing toward this single point.
It also looked ancient.
I stepped a little closer for a better look.
And immediately understood why Aldric's blade had slipped from his hand.
The statue's hand was driven into its own chest — not as damage, not as something broken or vandalized, but as the original and intended pose. Carved that way deliberately, with the precision of someone who had known exactly what they were depicting. Smears of red paint covered the surrounding stonework in patterns that radiated outward from the wound, as if something had been documented rather than staged.
Its face was that of a bulldog.It was wide and heavy-jowled with spikes of lashes carved around its eyes in radiating lines that made the gaze feel simultaneously blinded and all-seeing.
And where one head should have been, there were instead three additional heads positioned adjacent to it, each biting down on strands of hair of different kinds.
One held a woman's long hair while her head hung low and lifeless.
Another gripped a baby's fine hair, its head lying low, pain shot across its expression.
The third clamped onto a man's short hair while his head also hung low. His expression was not like the previous ones… it held abundant hints of joy and happiness.
I stood in front of it for a long moment without moving.
"Zero."
[I see it,] Zero said quietly. No jokes or sarcasm this time.
"What is it?"
Zero took a moment of breather then it's mechanic voice exhaled.
[I don't know,] it said. [And even though I don't like you, I'd advise you not to pry into it… not yet. Just let it be here and do your own thing. Don't do anything foolish.]
I looked at the statue's face, the bulldog jowls, the spiked lashes, the hand buried in its own chest, the depicted heads hanging low by the strands of hair clenched in its jaws and unknowingly began imagining scenes of worship and the misery of the victims.
My hands visibly shook while my mouth felt a pang of thirst, even though I had drunk before coming here.
I… too, was clearly feeling fear.
-Badum. Badum!
My heart raced in an unbelievable rhythm.it was at that moment I had heard serene footsteps along with it came an echoing voice...
"YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE SEEN THAT!"