As Yamino knelt among the remains of the skeletons scattered across the vast cavern floor, a creeping unease settled in his chest. His fingers hovered just above the surface of brittle bone fragments—so dry, so decayed that some crumbled under the faintest touch of his soul-body. These weren't recent deaths. These bones were ancient—well into the fossilization stage. Their coloration was pale brown, veins of mineral crusts laced through cracks in their surfaces like roots feeding from the dead. Even the shattered weapons beside them—blades snapped in two, shields cracked and bent inward, arrowheads embedded in skulls—were coated with dust and corrosion, nearly indistinguishable from the surrounding rock. It had to be over a hundred years since this place last saw life.
The deeper he wandered into the cavern, the clearer the decay became. The dead here had not been honored. No graves. No markings. Just silent piles of lost history. But then, amid the timeworn wreckage, something stood out. Tools.
Not ancient relics, either.
A dozen, maybe more—pickaxes, shovels, mining hammers—neatly stacked in one corner. Most were rusted or dulled, but not like the weapons. These hadn't been here for a century. Some had traces of leather still on the grips. Others bore faint manufacturer stamps. The most unsettling part? Two kinds of tools were far too abundant: pickaxes and hammers. Dozens of them, some even overlapping. And while the handles were cracked or weathered, they weren't fossilized. They weren't even buried under the dust fully. Ten years, at most. Maybe even less.
Yamino frowned deeply.
Something didn't add up.
If these bones had been here for over a century… why were there so many recent digging tools? Why did it look like someone had come here—and then vanished, just like those long-dead soldiers?
He backed away slowly, his eyes tracing the lines between the old and the new—the shattered armor, the untouched tools. His thoughts spun, forming a story from the silence.
Maybe a battle happened here a hundred years ago. Soldiers died. Maybe a massacre. Their corpses rotted and were forgotten, buried under time. But someone found this place… and started digging. Maybe they were searching for something. Riches? Secrets? Or maybe they stumbled in like I did.
He clenched his fists. Or maybe what happened to me… happened to them.
He remembered falling—with his body. Not just his soul. His physical form had been with him when the ground swallowed him whole. But he hadn't seen it since waking up on the bloody throne. That meant his body had to be nearby. Hidden. Lost. Or worse.
His gaze returned to the pickaxes again. There's a way in, he realized. These tools didn't grow out of the stone. Someone brought them here. Which means there's a path. An entrance. Or a tunnel. A way to escape.
But then came the final, chilling thought—Who left the tools here? And why did they never return?
.
.
.
Yamino bent down and wrapped his translucent fingers around the handle of one of the old pickaxes. Surprisingly, it didn't phase through like everything else had before. It felt solid in his grip—rough wood, cold metal. He blinked in confusion but brushed it aside. For now, he had a purpose. He walked to the center of the chamber where the skeletons were most densely scattered and slammed the pickaxe into the stone-packed dirt. A hollow thud echoed. Then another. And another.
" I can't save them…" he muttered to himself, sweatless and breathless even as he worked tirelessly, "then at least… I can bury them."
The ground was stubborn, packed tight by time and pressure, but the pickaxe chipped away steadily under his unrelenting swings. Shards of bone, fragments of armor, and rusted tools were moved aside with care. Every now and then, Yamino would pause to place broken remains gently beside the growing pit. "Sorry… I don't know who you were. But I'll make sure you're not left like this."
He dug for what felt like hours, even if his soul-body never tired. Eventually, he dropped the pickaxe and used his hands to clear out the softer layers of dirt, pushing soil and fragments into a mound. But as he brushed aside a layer of loose gravel, a strange thought occurred to him.
"…Wait a second."
He froze, eyes narrowing.
"How am I doing this?"
He held up a broken sword, twisted from heat and age. It had weight. It had resistance. He turned to the pickaxe still buried in the dirt. Then to the rusted helmets and plated gauntlets resting nearby. "How the hell am I touching these?"
He spun in place, pacing slightly as the question echoed again and again in his mind. "I couldn't touch the wall earlier. Couldn't lift a stone. Couldn't even punch something without phasing through it… So how? Why now?"
He opened his hands and stared at them—still ghostly, still slightly transparent under the cave's shimmering gem-lights. "Am I… becoming solid again? Or is this place different?"
There was no answer. Only the quiet clatter of bone shifting when he moved too close.
Then—Tang.
A metallic clang cut through the stillness like a whipcrack.
Yamino dropped to his knees and brushed the dirt away with quick, deliberate strokes. His fingers struck something hard. Not stone. Not bone. Something smoother.
"Something's down there," he whispered.
More dirt flew. His motions were frantic now, desperate. "Come on… come on…" And then—edges. Corners. A metal outline.
"A box?"
It was ironbound, half-buried in the floor of the cavern, coated in mossy grime and layers of packed mud. Yamino sat back, breathing deeply out of habit, even though his soul had no lungs to fill. "What the hell were you doing down here?" he muttered.
He placed both hands on the lid, eyes narrowing in focus. Whatever was inside had survived a hundred years—or more. And he was about to find out why.