The ruins did not rise from the earth.
They waited.
Anna felt it the moment her foot crossed the threshold where stone no longer remembered being cut by human hands. The air changed—thicker, older, threaded with a pressure that bent thought before it bent bone.
Behind her, the forest exhaled. Ahead, the ruins listened.
They stood half-swallowed by moss and time: colossal arches collapsed inward like broken ribs, runes worn smooth by centuries of weather and prayer. This place had once been a city—or a temple—or both. It had been important enough to be erased.
Lexus slowed beside her.
His shadow no longer behaved correctly. It stretched in directions the light did not justify, pooling at the base of shattered pillars as if reluctant to leave.
“This is a hinge,” he said quietly.
Anna
