Chapter 27 : the mouth of the forgotten

“Still think this is just curiosity?” Aldah muttered, eyes scanning the ridges.

“I’m reconsidering,” Vix said.

Their path wound through jagged rocks and snow-covered crevices, each one more twisted and lifeless than the last. No birds. No wind. Not even echoes.

Then they saw it.

At the base of a sunken ridge—half-buried by snowdrift and time—a mine entrance yawned open. Its support beams were warped and frost-bitten, the planks above bearing a worn iron sign, letters so faded they barely remained:

> Vehlor Extraction Site #3

Closed by Order of the Guild – Year 247

“…Vehlor?” Aldah frowned. “I thought all the old mana mines collapsed during the Eclipse War.”

“Most did,” Vix replied, staring into the opening. “Or were buried. Sealed. Some were shut for other reasons.”

The black trail led directly into the mine. Nhar’zel was no longer visible, but its presence still clung to the air like cold smoke.

Vix knelt beside the entrance, brushing aside snow to reveal sigils etched into the stone—barely visible, worn to the point of erasure.

Not containment glyphs.

Not warnings.

Invocations.

He traced the rune with one gloved hand. “…This is older than the war.”

Aldah stepped closer. “Why lead us here?”

Vix looked up at the dark tunnel. No wind blew from within. No sound emerged. Just stillness. Expectant.

“It doesn’t want to kill us,” he said finally. “It wants to show us something.”

Aldah grimaced. “That’s somehow worse.”

He stood. “We’re not going in.”

She blinked. “We’re not?”

“Not yet. I don’t walk into ancient cursed mines without preparation,” Vix said, turning from the darkness. “Especially when the thing inside is playing games.”

As they backed away from the entrance, the shadows within shifted, almost imperceptibly—like something within the mine exhaled.

Not air.

Memory.

---

That Night – Back at Mira’s

Aldah stood near the window, looking out over the snow-covered ridges.

“Whatever that thing is,” she muttered to herself, “it’s not just feeding anymore.”

Behind her, Vix unrolled a crumbling scroll they’d taken from Mira’s archives before leaving.

The title was barely legible:

> Vehlor’s Descent: The Collapse of Sanctioned Mana Harvesting and the Emergence of Hunger Spirits

At the bottom, a handwritten note in red ink:

> Do not disturb the sealed mines.

Do not follow the shadows that walk.

And above all—do not answer when they speak.