The gates closed behind us with a thunderous groan.
BOOOOOOM.
The sound echoed through the canyon for what felt like an eternity before fading into absolute silence.
Not ordinary silence.
The kind that made me instinctively lower my voice despite nobody being around to hear it.
I stopped walking.
The change was immediate.
Outside, the Dragon's Grave had looked like little more than an impossibly large canyon shrouded beneath black clouds.
Inside...
It was another world.
Ash drifted lazily through the air, carried by a wind that possessed neither warmth nor cold.
Golden lightning flashed endlessly between the clouds overhead.
No thunder followed.
The sky itself seemed unwilling to make noise.
Before us stretched a canyon so vast that the opposite cliffs disappeared beyond the horizon.
Black stone covered everything.
Not volcanic rock.
Not ordinary granite.
Something darker.
Something that reflected almost no light.
It felt as though the land itself had been burned so completely that even color had abandoned it.
I slowly exhaled.
The air tasted...
Heavy.
Like breathing inside an ancient forge.
Only instead of molten iron—
I tasted dragon mana.
Pure.
Ancient.
Overwhelming.
It pressed gently against my body.
Not enough to hurt.
Enough to remind me where I stood.
Beside me, Ceal quietly removed a pair of thin spectacles from his storage ring.
He rarely wore them.
Only when he intended to work.
The lenses shimmered with dozens of tiny runic circles before settling over his eyes.
Without saying a word, he raised a hand.
Several fist-sized crystalline spheres floated out of another storage device hidden beneath his coat.
Eight in total.
Each no larger than an apple.
Fine runic lines glowed across their polished surfaces.
One after another, they drifted into the air.
Then scattered in different directions.
Some flew upward toward the cliffs.
Others descended deeper into the canyon.
Another skimmed only a few meters above the ground.
I watched them disappear.
Astaroso: "New design?"
Ceal nodded without looking away from the floating display only he could see.
Ceal: "Version six."
I blinked.
Astaroso: "What happened to versions one through five?"
Ceal: "They exploded."
"..."
I decided not to ask.
That answer somehow explained everything.
The crystalline spheres continued spreading outward.
Thin strands of mana connected each of them back to Ceal like invisible threads.
Every few seconds tiny windows appeared before him, displaying terrain, mana density, elevation, and dozens of measurements I couldn't even identify.
Watching him work reminded me why people underestimated him.
They saw an Artificer.
A scholar.
A Magic Engineer.
Someone who built weapons.
Someone who stayed behind the front lines.
Idiots.
Ceal didn't need to swing a sword to dominate a battlefield.
He understood battlefields better than the people fighting on them.
I looked away before my curiosity convinced me to ask how half those devices worked.
The answer would probably require three textbooks and a lecture.
Instead...
I finally looked around properly.
My breath caught.
Dragon bones.
Everywhere.
Not scattered randomly.
Embedded into the landscape itself.
An enormous rib cage protruded from the canyon wall hundreds of meters above us.
Farther ahead, what I initially mistook for a mountain slowly revealed itself to be the skull of something unimaginably large.
One eye socket alone was larger than House Ashford's entire training arena.
Its jaw had collapsed into the canyon floor, forming a natural bridge stretching across the abyss.
Far beyond that...
A spine.
Vertebrae taller than castles stretched across the horizon before disappearing beneath layers of black stone.
I stood motionless.
Something...
Was wrong.
Not dangerous.
Wrong.
I closed my eyes.
Trying to remember.
When I had first written the Dragon's Grave all those years ago...
There had only been one dragon.
One.
An Ancient Dragon whose corpse had transformed the surrounding land after its death.
That was the foundation.
The key piece of lore.
Everything revolved around that single corpse.
So...
Where had all these others come from?
I slowly counted the visible skeletons.
One.
Three.
Seven.
Twelve.
I stopped.
There was no point.
The canyon held far too many.
Reality had expanded.
Again.
I should have expected it.
Ever since transmigrating into Avalon, the world had been quietly filling every gap I had left behind as a teenage writer.
Kingdoms I had barely named now possessed centuries of documented history.
Minor families had complete bloodline records.
Cities I described in two paragraphs now housed millions of people.
Apparently...
Ancient dragons weren't exempt.
Ceal: "You're thinking too loudly."
I glanced toward him.
Astaroso: "...Thinking has volume now?"
Ceal: "When you frown like that."
Fair enough.
I looked back toward the endless sea of bones.
Astaroso: "There are more than I expected."
Ceal followed my gaze.
Ceal: "More dragon remains?"
I nodded.
Astaroso: "A lot more."
He remained silent for several seconds.
Then—
Ceal: "You've been here before?"
"..."
Careful.
Very careful.
Astaroso: "No."
Technically true.
Ceal: "Then how do you know?"
I sighed.
This again.
Astaroso: "...Instinct."
Ceal looked at me.
Long enough to express exactly how much he disliked that answer.
Ceal: "Convenient."
Astaroso: "Extremely."
He shook his head before returning his attention to the floating displays.
Thankfully...
He didn't press further.
That was one thing I appreciated about Ceal.
He noticed everything.
But he also understood that some questions didn't have answers people were willing to give.
The wind shifted.
Ash drifted across the canyon like black snow.
For a while...
Neither of us spoke.
We simply walked.
Our footsteps echoed softly against ancient stone.
Crunch.
Crunch.
Crunch.
The silence wasn't uncomfortable.
It was...
Respectful.
Like entering an ancient tomb.
After nearly ten minutes, Ceal suddenly stopped.
So did I.
He frowned slightly.
Not at the terrain.
At one of the displays floating before him.
Astaroso: "Problem?"
He didn't answer immediately.
Instead, he enlarged one of the windows.
Mana readings.
Perfectly stable.
Temperature.
Stable.
Pressure.
Stable.
Then another reading.
Life signs.
Empty.
Ceal adjusted the spectacles.
Looked again.
His frown deepened.
Ceal: "...No insects."
I blinked.
Only then did I notice.
No buzzing.
No crawling.
No birds.
No distant cries from beasts.
Nothing.
Not even moss clung to the dragon bones.
An entire canyon...
Without life.
I slowly scanned the landscape again.
The realization settled heavily inside me.
This wasn't merely quiet.
It was sterile.
As though life itself refused to exist here.
Then—
Crunch.
Both of us froze.
The sound hadn't come from either of us.
It came from somewhere behind.
I turned immediately.
Nothing.
Just drifting ash.
Towering bones.
Black stone.
Silence.
Crunch.
Closer this time.
I activated Dragon Aura instinctively.
Golden mana flowed quietly through my body.
My senses expanded.
Mana signatures.
Heat.
Movement.
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Beside me, Ceal's fingers danced through several commands.
The observation constructs immediately changed formation.
Three climbed higher.
Two descended.
The remaining three circled us.
Scanning.
Searching.
The displays before him updated continuously.
Nothing.
No life.
No mana fluctuation.
No movement.
And yet—
Crunch.
Another step.
Slow.
Heavy.
Like something enormous casually walking across ancient bone.
I looked toward Ceal.
He was already looking at me.
Neither of us spoke.
We didn't need to.
He heard it too.
One of the floating crystals suddenly flickered.
Its image distorted.
Static spread across the display.
Then—
It disappeared.
Not destroyed.
Not broken.
Gone.
The mana thread connecting it to Ceal simply...
Ended.
He immediately switched to another construct.
Then another.
Both vanished.
One after another.
Without warning.
Without resistance.
Within seconds...
All eight observation constructs had disappeared from his network.
The canyon became silent once more.
Ceal slowly removed his spectacles.
Folded them.
Placed them back into his storage ring.
Then, for the first time since entering the Dragon's Grave...
His hand rested on the hilt of the weapon at his waist.
His voice remained calm.
Steady.
Controlled.
Ceal: "Stay behind me."
I did.
Because for the first time since arriving in Avalon...
Even I had no idea what was waiting for us.