The ruins did not belong to time as men understood it, for the stones that formed their broken arches and hollow chambers had endured beyond memory, beyond language, beyond the fragile records that once named them.
Darkness lay thick within their depths, not merely the absence of light but a presence in itself, something that breathed slow and deep, as though the earth beneath it held a pulse that had never ceased.
Fragments of pillars leaned at impossible angles, their surfaces worn smooth by ages that had forgotten their purpose, their silence heavier than any ruin should have carried.
At the center, where the ground had once been sealed, where something had once been bound, the air shifted with a faint distortion, subtle yet undeniable.
"…I was chained," the voice said.
It was not spoken aloud.
It moved.
Through stone.
Through memory.
Through the hollow spaces where time had eroded meaning.
