"Should we bring fire?"
When Siye finished speaking, the entire camp fell silent for two breaths.
Skala looked at her, his eyes a little surprised.
"…What did you say?"
Siye was stunned for a moment, her brow slightly furrowed, as if she had just realized what she had said.
She opened her mouth, her tone hesitant: "I mean…torches. Should we bring torches?"
"I didn't say we needed to burn it down," she added, "Of course…it's not that we don't need to burn it…it's just…"
She stopped, as if she didn't know how to continue. In that instant, she seemed to be struggling with some impulse in her mind.
Skala glanced at her several times, said nothing, and just nodded.
"Bring them."
After the team regrouped, they set off, their destination being the totem house in the center of Italk—which had once been the main sacrificial site for worshipping the Mammoth loa in all of southern ZulDrak.
It hadn't completely collapsed; from the outside, it even looked quite intact, only the door panel was half-fallen off, swinging open, as if inviting visitors to enter.
Snow hadn't entered the house; there was a strange dry-wet line around the entrance, as if someone had cleaned it, but the traces were extremely faint, making it impossible to discern how it had been cleaned.
Toka took the lead, bending down to peer into the doorway.
"It's very dark," he whispered, "But it's quite clean."
Skala took the torch, extended the flame inside, and the firelight reflected mottled marks on the stone pillars.
They entered one by one.
The interior of the building was very clean, and also very "empty."
It wasn't that there were no items, but rather that the aura was empty—there was no smell of soot, no smell of incense, not even the decaying smells of blood, mold, or maggots, only an indescribable damp smell.
It seemed that this place hadn't been visited for too long, but it had never truly been abandoned.
Siye stood at the entrance, not going in.
Her foot was caught on the threshold, as if an invisible rope was constricting her calf, preventing her from moving.
"It's fine inside," Skala looked at her, "What are you afraid of?"
"I don't know," she said softly, "But I just thought…we were here to burn this place down."
"Who told you that?"
She was silent for a while.
"I thought…you would say that."
The torch "snapped" with a burst of sparks, illuminating a fragment of an old idol—a stone carving of a Mammoth, with half its nose broken, its mouth still intact but wide open.
It seemed to be shouting something, but could never utter it.
As Skala approached the stone statue, the divine emblem in his embrace trembled slightly.
It wasn't heat, nor cold, but a dull fluctuation, like a heart briefly stopping then resuming its beat.
He frowned and looked up at the dome of the totem house.
That was originally supposed to be the main position for the mural representing the Mammoth loa, but now that wall surface had clearly been repainted.
Most of the original totem patterns had disappeared, replaced by a crude yet extremely oppressive painting:
A house—whose structure looked very similar to the one they were currently in—was engulfed in a sea of fire.
The entire house seemed to be swallowed by flames descending from the sky, the surrounding buildings and totem poles began to collapse, and the ground cracked, forming a swirling structure.
But what was most unsettling were the shadowy figures within the flames, all fleeing outward, but none had faces.
The positions of their faces were all blank.
The mural's style was chaotic, and its brushwork crude; it was clear it wasn't in the traditional loa style, nor did it resemble Italk's original religious decorations.
"Look at the mural on the ceiling, isn't it…?"
Before he could finish, Toka and Siye also looked up.
Their reactions, however, were completely different.
Toka's pupils constricted sharply, his whole body taut like a drawn bowstring. His lips moved, his voice so low it was almost inaudible:
"Is that…Hakkah?"
A complex, indescribable emotion flashed across Siye's face; she stared at the painting for a long time, finally uttering a name:
"…Rhunok."
In their eyes, the painting on that wall seemed entirely different.
Toka saw a blurry-faced snow leopard.
She lay sprawled beneath a ridge, her limbs chained to totem poles, bright red blood flowing from her white fur, staining the entire mountain peak.
Siye saw a bear.
With singed white fur and an unnaturally huge body, he stood in a forest fire, as if he himself was burning, roaring out of the painting.
Toka stepped back half a pace, his voice trembling: "This isn't, no one could have painted this…This isn't real."
Siye stared intently at the stone ceiling, enunciating each word:
"This painting…has also appeared in my dreams."
Skala frowned deeply.
"We should retreat first."
No sooner had he spoken than a spark leaped from the head of Toka's torch, tracing a brief and eerie trajectory through the air, landing precisely between the stone brick cracks inside the doorway.
No one paid attention to this small detail; this tiny spark could absolutely not ignite the stone totem house.
However, blue-grey tongues of flame seemed to have been waiting there, suddenly darting out along the floor tile cracks, climbing along the ground and pillars, instantly covering half the wall.
"It's on fire!" Siye cried out.
Toka instinctively went to swat it, but as soon as he touched the flame, he felt a cold, burning pain beneath his palm—
The flames had no temperature, but carried a stinging sensation that didn't belong to reality, as if penetrating through the skin.
And it was stone; fire simply couldn't burn it.
Yet it still burned.
Skala's expression changed; he abruptly turned his head to look at the position of the dome mural.
"Don't touch it!" Skala roared, "Get out, everyone get out!"
The three quickly retreated from the totem house, crossed the dry-wet line at the entrance, and returned to the streets of Italk.
But the fire within the shrine, like ink, continued to spread across the walls, unhurriedly, stroke by stroke, as if replicating a predetermined pattern.
Skala gazed at the totem house, now engulfed in flames, his eyes growing colder.
After a long moment, he finally spoke in a low voice:
"The mural I saw…it depicted this very fire."
Toka was stunned.
"And it's not 'like,' nor is it a symbolic prophecy," Skala said, "It's a complete retelling; the angle at which the roof cracked, the direction in which the totem poles collapsed…they are all identical."
As the words left his mouth, the air seemed to solidify for half a second.
Siye squatted on the ground, half her face illuminated in a ghostly pale by the firelight.
She asked in a low voice: "Are you saying…it predicted this fire in advance?"
Skala nodded, then shook his head, unsure of his thoughts.
Then he spoke with a definitive tone, "There is an unknown existence showing us the future."
Toka stepped back half a pace, opened his mouth, but said nothing.
He remembered that painting, and the totem from his dream, and Hakkah's blurry face.
Siye lowered her head, rubbing the bone charm around her neck, and murmured: "What if it painted more than just this one…?"
Skala glanced at them, and he touched the divine emblem originally bestowed by Obsidian himself.
The divine emblem, of unknown material, still radiated warmth, like a parent's embrace in childhood.
A realization arose from the depths of Skala's heart.
"I'm still not sure…"
"But I have a feeling, this is a script."
"A script written by someone or something, waiting for us to follow step by step in order."