Chapter 185: Bone Roads

The ramp descended with a hydraulic exhale and stopped. The two days’ dust began peeling off the Triarch piece by piece.

For a moment, nothing moved. Only the cool and still air that carried the pressure like air before a thunderstorm entered and shocked them.

An Lang yawned heavily, then stood up. “Guys, are we waiting for the Starfire Opal to fall under our feet or what?”

Liu Yan threw a sharp glance at him, then shifted her gaze back to the blade of her sword.

Wu Ze increased her grip on her weapons and stood up abruptly. She walked and stopped on the open ramp.

An Lang joined her and stepped out together.

Liu Yan’s gaze remained on Leon as she stood up. Words formed in her throat, but she didn’t let them out.

Heavy silence fell on Leon as he watched Liu Yan exit the Triarch. When he stood up and was ready to follow his squad, the swirling blue light on the screen popped up, followed by the AI’s voice.

“Good luck, Leon Storm.”

A faint welcoming smile landed on Leon’s cheeks as he turned and looked at the slow-moving waves on the screen. “Thank you.”

Stepping out of the Triarch was like leaving heaven for hell. Strong waves of wind, light that promised to leave him with broken bones, fell on him. Yet he didn’t hesitate in his steps.

…

On the damned earth, An Lang knelt down and focused on the giant structure that stood a hundred miles away. “I think we can start with that.”

He pointed a hand in that direction while standing up.

Wu Ze walked to his side, focused on the direction, then smiled. “Wow,” she said, hitting the back of An Lang’s head with her right palm.

“Why?” An Lang asked with a frown on his face. He watched Wu Ze walk away without clarifying why she hit him.

Liu Yan whispered as she walked past him, following Wu Ze. “Just take that as a compliment.”

She giggled for a second. But when she saw Leon watching her, she shifted her mood into a stiff one, then doubled her steps.

“Take that as a compliment. How?” An Lang repeated the statement. “If that’s what it means, then I don’t like it.”

Leon joined him, placed a hand on his shoulder, and smiled. “Don’t be angry. Girls can sometimes become unpredictable.”

An Lang looked at Leon with a strange stare, then shook his head. Only he knew what was in his head when he moved forward, releasing himself from Leon’s grip.

…

The further they neared the pointed structure, the more the clicking sound increased.

When they stopped at the front of the red-stoned castle, the chamber beyond it was vast. Sharp stones that promised long-lasting suffering instead of immediate death lingered at all angles.

The ceiling soared high above them, hard to measure because the rock itself gave off a cool and steady, pale amber light that made it look like they were trapped in quartz.

The lights spread across the ceiling in uneven patches between the glowing stones.

Leon stepped to the base, where the mouth of the castle was, and said nothing.

An Lang moved in beside him, war discs shifting on his back as he looked up.

Liu Yan came next with sharp eyes. She checked entry points, exits, then threats. But when she turned toward the glowing ceiling, she paused.

Wu Ze followed; fingers poised over the buttons of her pens as she halted right beside Liu Yan.

A sound that did not have the tone of a roar, nor any biological scream they knew, echoed. It was a low, steady resonance that came through the ground, the walls, and the soles of their boots. The kind of sound the body feels before the ears do.

All four of them stopped and prepared their stance. An Lang drew his war discs. Wu Ze pressed the buttons on her pen and waited. Liu Yan held her sword as if it were a second heart.

But Leon stood there, hands resting in his pockets, as if the sound was just a whisper.

The sound intensified when the three turned toward the walls and noticed the stone shaking, as if wanting to explode.

It lasted for only three seconds, then faded. But the signature it left behind was harder to forget.

Leon’s panel flickered at the edge of his vision as the chamber returned to its stillness.

He looked at it without moving his head.

[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]

Environmental scan initiated.

Classification suspended.

Existential Weight: UNMEASURABLE

’No identification, rank, or hostility?’ Leon wondered as he watched the screen flash once, then dim.

He slowly pulled his arms from his pockets and watched his friends without relaying the information to them.

An Lang released a slow breath. “That was the walls,” he stated, placing one of the war discs at his back, gripping the other under his right arm.

“Yes,” Leon responded, then neared him. “Just the walls.”

An Lang’s grip slightly loosened, but he wasn’t ready to risk his life for any of Leon’s words.

Liu Yan stepped ahead but turned and whispered. “Let’s keep moving.” She continued without checking if any of them were following or not.

They crossed the chamber in a loose formation. Liu Yan slightly ahead, Wu Ze on the right flank, An Lang on the left, Leon at the center-rear. Their boots were almost silent on the pale stone floor.

At the far wall, they found what the briefing documents had failed to mention.

The equipment was arranged in a circle.

It wasn’t scattered, broken, or buried. It was organized in the same way a wise man would set his trap. Tools with handles faced outward. Weapons lay flat with blades toward the center. A combat harness folded with unusual care. And in the middle, on a flat stone, was a data recorder. Its charge indicator blinked a slow amber pulse that matched the rock above.

When the light blinked once, Liu Yan approached and stretched her arms toward it.

“Don’t.”

She stopped and turned to Leon. But Leon’s eyes weren’t focused on her; they were locked on the recorder instead.

“If it’s still running after years down here, something kept it running.”

Silence settled over them as Leon’s words drifted into their guts.

Liu Yan withdrew her hand and turned away, but kept tilting her gaze back to the recorder, as if she might take it regardless…

They left the circle untouched, yet their footprints glowed with a different light, as if the castle itself was recording every single detail.

An Lang glanced back at it once, then quickened his step, leaving the door open and creaking as it swung sideways.

The Bone Roads announced themselves by feel before the Madhouse squad could see them.

The texture underfoot changed. Pale stone gave way to something denser and smoother. Leon slowed, crouched, and pressed two fingers to the ground.

He closed his eyes and allowed his other senses to feel the real texture of the stones.

The material was layered and load-bearing, off-white and ivory. The corridor edges arched overhead, not with the logic of construction, but of something growing.

He stood and nodded while a grin secretly appeared on his face.

Three corridors ran from the junction, each descending at a shallow angle. The same faint cold air moved through them. The walls absorbed their footfalls with the same light the chamber the recorder was in had.

Wu Ze stepped closer, studying the wall. “These tunnels look old.”

They hesitated on each, but took the center corridor without a second thought.

Leon tracked their position by memory: descent angle, estimated depth, compass bearing corrected for magnetic drift.

’If the documents were right, the Starfire Opal fragments lay deeper to the northeast. If the Bone Roads held, they would lead there,’ Leon wondered as he followed quietly.

After twenty minutes, the corridor opened onto a ledge.

It was narrow, only two meters of compressed bone extending into a space so vast that the far side was invisible.

Below, darkness dropped a hundred meters to a floor broken by scattered pools of molten material, each casting a dim orange circle. Above, the amber bioluminescence was weaker here, patchy and thin.

Between the darkness and the scattered light, shadowy figures with metal teeth moved.

Leon saw them first. Eight feet tall and bipedal, with torsos too long and legs bent at impossible angles. Branching horns rose from their skulls, each pattern distinct. Their skin absorbed light completely.

They moved not in silence, but with silence.

Through the optical feed on his forearm, Leon saw one of them pause. He swallowed empty air for a second as he saw the horns along its skull ridge pulse with a pale, directional bioluminescence.

Another, twenty meters away, where their own voices struggled to reach their ears, Leon’s panel attempted classification, but failed.

He tried to force it by using the skill Hei Yung taught him, yet ended up failing twice.

On the fourth attempt, where all his hopes were gone, a word appeared where name and rank should have been.

[SOVEREIGN]

Nothing else followed. No hostility assessment. No rank. Just the word, sitting in his vision for four seconds before fading.

This time also, Leon didn’t tell the others. He didn’t know how to say it so they wouldn’t explode.

An Lang’s face was already pale, his hands clumsy holding the discs.

Liu Yan stood motionless, tracking the faint smell she figured she knew but couldn’t find its source. Leon knew that look…

He walked toward her and placed a hand on her shoulder. She pressed back once in acknowledgment, then brushed Leon’s hand off.

Leon turned to signal the retreat, or to pause, but noticed Wu Ze had not even moved from where she stood ten minutes ago.

She stood one step closer to the edge than the others, weight forward, eyes fixed below. Not reacting, but counting the intervals between the horn pulses and the changes in movement.

Leon waited for two seconds. And on the third, Wu Ze stepped back on her own. She turned and walked past them without a word.

An Lang let out a ragged breath and pressed his back to the corridor wall before following. “Hhuh, what a waste of energy.”

Leon looked at the ledge once more. The horned below continued moving. None looked up. None of the horn pulses turned toward the ledge.

He stepped back.

The corridor took them in again. The Bone Roads led deeper, northeast, toward a point on a map marked by a dead man and once walked by Leon’s father.

Above them, the amber light pulsed once and held.

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