(Vale POV)

  After reluctantly leaving what must have been the perfect image of heaven, I went to work on making a pce for us to sleep tonight. Thankfully, the ruins of the old structure would serve as a perfect cornerstone for what I was pnning. And since all of the building pieces had finished crafting I could get started right away.

  Quickly running inside the crumbling remnants, I made sure to pce a wooden foundation first, which would also serve as a simple floor. I then rapidly pced the walls to fill in the spaces between the stone corners of the old structure. I even made sure to account for the small outcropping at the back. However, for some reason, it was in a weird position at the center of the wall.

  Oh well, whatever it was must not have been that important if it was this degraded. At least, that was what I thought until May came in, screaming at me to stop.

  I was obviously confused at this as I thought she would have wanted somepce to sleep for the night, though it was also a little te to stop me as I just finalized the roof construction. This meant that the only thing missing was the door and shutters for the few windows that I pced in the walls. But this did not stop her from expining to me in a very loud manner that this pce used to be the shrine to some deity.

  Honestly, most of what she said ended up either going over my head or in one ear and out the other. However, the brief mention that this could have been one of Grandma’s shrines did manage to stick, and I decided to make a statue for both Elinaria and Grandma. I also made sure not to forget a small stone sb to pce them upon.

  Once they were made and I finished pcing the remaining pieces of the building, I went to the small outcropping at the back and pced down the stone sb. This caused May to instantly go quiet before I pced the small statues of Elinaria and Grandma upon it. Once she saw them, I could swear I heard her breathing pause for a moment, and it was that very moment of time that allowed me to stop and give a quick prayer. Of course, this prayer was more like the rapid and unintelligible ramblings of a child on a mix of sugar and caffeine, which almost sounded like a fox screaming at things, but that was not my problem.

  What did soon became my problem was the burst of power radiating out of the small shrine, pushing everything back. The power then quickly rushed back toward the shrine before coalescing into a shape behind it.

  Quickly running outside to get a good view of the figure, I turned around and saw a rge red outline of Grandma holding a spear and striking toward the building. This shocked me, and I almost cried, but when the spear made contact with the building, nothing happened. That caused me to feel a weird mixture of relief and confusion, which only sted until the spear made contact with the statues. It was at that moment that both of the statues released a burst of power, which stirred up the air in the area.

  Afterward, the three of us stood there for about a minute or two, just looking toward the statues in the shrine. Our state of shock was only broken when I heard shouting coming from down the road. That, in and of itself, was enough to spook me, as I had never met anyone outside of the sect or some official pce where ws held people back in this world. This meant that they could be anyone and do anything, and because of that, I ran back into the now shrine and pulled out my bow while crouching behind one of the open windows.

  This caught the attention of my two traveling companions, but they did not do much except for pcing their hands near their weapons and waiting for our visitors to show themselves. I settled for just barely peeking over the window seal while trying to keep my ears as ft as possible.

  About two minutes ter, a young girl about 14 to 15 years old came darting into the clearing and stopping just short of the edge. The entire time, she was looking at the building I had just built with a look of astonishment. Behind her, the shouts were still coming, and the ones making them soon entered the clearing a few seconds ter.

  The moment that they entered, the girl turned around to them and said in a loud voice, “I thought you said that there were only ruins here. Not an actual shrine!”

  Vulthurtoor