elocation magic—at least, that’s her best guess.

  Selene blinks, hard, as the haze of displacement fades. Her chest tightens. The shift isn’t clean. It’s not like stepping through a doorway—it’s more like being yanked through one sideways, blindfolded, while someone yells in your ear.

  She stumbles. Boots scrape stone. Her heart bangs around inside her ribs like it’s trying to escape.

  Wherever they were—whatever corridor they just left—this isn’t it.

  They’ve been moved. Or shunted. Or dumped.

  Somewhere bigger. Vast. Echoing. Large enough to swallow their entire caravan without so much as a burp.

  A chamber—no. A hall.

  Grand in that forgotten, heavy kind of way. Everything here feels old. Not just aged—but dignified, eroded, and somehow... expectant.

  She doesn’t drop the veil. Her camouflage spell still holds.

  A spark of relief nudges her thoughts. Normally, that kind of transit would’ve shredded basic cloaking. But this? Still active. Stable. That’s... unexpected.

  One hand flips open her grimoire. She jots down a note behind the spell matrix.

  One test proves nothing. She knows that. But gods, she hates not knowing.

  Light slices through the gloom. Clean. Sharp.

  A second flash, thinner, almost surgical, burns across the air. It vanishes a second later, leaving warmth behind her eyelids like a ghost-touch.

  Selene doesn’t blink this time. The afterimage hangs in her vision, floating just out of reach.

  The silence that follows feels wrong. Not empty. Not quiet. Just… waiting.

  And then—he’s there.

  Her breath catches.

  He stands dead center in the hall. Upright. Still. Like a statue.

  A flick of her fingers activates night-sight. Vision slides into ghostly blues and silvers, revealing the full shape of him.

  “A man?” she mutters.

  It escapes before she can help it.

  He wasn’t there a heartbeat ago. She knows that. She scanned every inch of this room the moment they landed. Shadows don’t just grow men.

  Not one of theirs. Not a relic hunter. Not a crew member. Definitely not some rogue explorer who got here ahead of them.

  And yet—there he is.

  The floor shifts. Stone groans beneath them.

  Columns twist. Angles realign. The architecture itself moves.

  Selene locks her gaze on him.

  The room didn’t respond like this to her team’s arrival. Not even close.

  So what is this?

  Recognition? A greeting?

  The ruin is changing around him.

  She narrows her focus.

  Plain clothes. Roughspun. Dusty boots. Dirt-caked trousers. Could pass for a farmer—until you notice the way he stands.

  Balanced. Measured. Shoulders set. Weight distributed like someone trained to fight.

  Military. Or something close.

  But his hands... they tell a different story. Calloused. Layered with old scars. These aren’t fighter’s hands. They’re workman’s.

  Then his eyes—She flinches.

  Too wide. Not hostile. Not even angry. Just... confused. Lost. Like he’s not entirely sure any of this is real. Or worse—like he’s not real.

  Those are the eyes of someone who’s misplaced something they can’t get back.

  Then she sees it.

  The one thing she always checks for. The thing she should’ve seen first.

  She didn’t.

  Because she got curious.

  Because she always gets curious.

  Because damn it, her curiosity always slows her down.

  No aura.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Nothing.

  She stiffens, back flat against the nearest stone column, grimoire gripped tight in her hands.

  There’s no shimmer. No echo. Not even a flicker.

  Everyone has an aura. Even the dead. Even machines. Especially machines.

  But him?

  Void.

  “Impossible,” she whispers.

  Not for the others. Just for her. Just to hear something solid in the middle of all this static.

  A man with no aura.

  That’s not just strange. That’s dangerous.

  Theories spiral.

  A curse? A cloaking spell perfect to the point of erasure?

  A summoned entity that didn’t stick the landing?

  Or—No.

  No, no, no.

  She stops herself before the last theory lands.

  Because if it isn’t a spell—

  If he’s like this naturally—

  Then it’s worse.

  Far worse.

  Because the race of Man?

  They already don’t fit cleanly in the world’s weave.

  They’re history’s ghost notes. Impossible threads. Discarded edits in the margins of a much older draft.

  Maybe that’s why he doesn’t shine.

  Maybe he shouldn’t be here at all.

  Selene doesn’t breathe.

  She watches him, watches the chamber, watches the way both seem to be waiting for the other to move first.

  The ruin has chosen to show them this.

  Why now? Why him?

  She adjusts her grip on the book.

  Notes can wait.

  Right now, her only job is to see what happens next—

  —before it sees her first.

  “What in the name of stone…” Gorik mutters, just loud enough for the others to hear. His grip tightens around his hammer on instinct, old reflexes flaring. Swing first, process later.

  The haft shifts.

  Slips.

  It knocks against his boot with a soft clink. He catches it before it drops, heart hammering harder than the weapon ever could.

  Then—stillness.

  Not out of fear. He’s seen fear—real fear—dressed in fire and blood and screeching death. This isn’t that. This is silence. Selene’s kind of silence. The way she exhales—quiet, almost not there—tells him more than any alarm could.

  The spell’s still holding.

  Their eyes meet. One nod. Silent, sharp. She's still got it. Magister-trained, thank the Deep—knows how to layer glamours without unraveling the weave.

  Right now, they need subtlety more than steel.

  A heartbeat later, the link opens between them—mental, clean, cold. Like a splash of glacial water down the spine.

  Gorik’s thought hits the connection, rough and blunt.

  Tibbins doesn't answer right away. He’s halfway hanging off a ledge, squinting through his goggles, frantically trying to get a better angle without toppling over or sacrificing half his gear to gravity.

  Gorik plants a hand on the gnome’s belt, yanking him back before he swan-dives into what would no doubt be a historic disaster.

  Tibbins' thoughts tumble over themselves in real-time.

  Selene yanks him back with a sharp tug to the sleeve.

  “Still,” she whispers, jaw tight. There’s heat behind her voice. Not frustration. Not exactly. Something surgical.

  “Spell’s fragile,” she adds. “You twitch like that again, you’ll shatter it.”

  Gorik thinks,The unspoken idiot tags along at the end.

  But the man doesn’t react.

  Not to the whisper, not to them.

  He just turns in place—slow, deliberate—like someone half-awake inside a lucid dream.

  No panic. No flinching. Just... awe.

  His gaze moves across the stonework, tracing the runes and carvings like he’s reading scripture. Reverent. Too reverent. Selene doesn’t like it.

  It’s not confusion on his face. It’s something worse.

  Wonder.

  Not at the structure or the history—but the magic.

  As if he’s feeling it for the first time.

  Like it’s washing over him—soaking into him.

  Like he was starving, and this place is feeding him.

  Selene feels her breath catch. Her pulse stutters. Not fear. Not yet. Something colder.

  Recognition flickers in his eyes. There. Gone. He knows this place. Or he thinks he does. But the memory’s fogged—hovering just out of reach.

  Then it starts.

  The hum.

  Low. Bone-deep. Not a sound so much as a pressure—like fingers brushing her skin from the inside out.

  She feels it before she hears it.

  Magic.

  It stirs.

  Like something sleeping just rolled over in its bed.

  The chamber responds.

  The runes lining the walls bloom with light, pulsing in rhythm to the man’s footsteps. Not reacting to him.

  Because of him.

  Her throat goes dry. Words stick like splinters.

  Gorik doesn’t answer right away. His eyes narrow. Lips press to a grim line.

  Then, out loud, “No…"

  A beat.

  “I don’t know,” Selene whispers.

  But the magic does.

  It curls around him. Reaches for him.

  Recognizes him.

  And that—more than the spells, the silence, the hum in her bones—is what terrifies her.