They jumped.
One by one, figures slipped over the cliff edge and vanished into the fog like shadows.
Eliza Park's coat flared behind her as gravity embraced her, wind howling past her ears. Her face remained unreadable, eyes narrowed against the white blur, her body cutting through the mist like a spear. Seconds passed like eternities, until the mist broke and the jagged terrain below came into view—an ocean of warped, cracked stone, glittering like scales under scattered sunlight.
She landed in a crouch, boots scraping against the ground, and stood with a breathless calm as the others descended around her.
Harper hit the ground next, knees bending, muttering a winded curse. "Do you always pick cliffs instead of doors, Liz?"
"Ow!"she yelped, hitting the ground in a somersault. "Okay—whoever invented free-falling onto ancient terrain owes me a spine replacement!"
"Cheaper than elevators," Eliza replied, brushing dust off her gloves.
A third figure slammed into the ground with a soldier's precision—Mikhail, the silent Russian man mountain, adjusting his gun strap like it was just another Tuesday. Seth Wu tumbled down, rolling before springing up with a grin. "Ten out of ten landing. I stick it."
Kaede dropped last, the wind fluttering her pale-blue jacket as she scanned the terrain, glyph-laced gloves humming softly at her sides.
Ivana arrived not by fall, but impact.
Her armored boots cratered the earth when she landed, sending a shockwave that made pebbles skip. Her crimson braid whipped behind her like a war banner.
Harper glanced at the smoking spot beneath her feet. "Nice of you to make an entrance."
Ivana said nothing, her stoic face focused on the terrain below.
They stood on an uneven plateau, framed by jagged stone teeth that jutted from the ground like a fossilized monster's mouth. The mist clung to their ankles, and deeper still, the air smelled… old. Not musty. Ancient.
"So," Seth said, hands on hips, "where's the door? Trapdoor? Elevator button? Glowing rune? I'm open to anything that doesn't involve breaking my legs."
There was nothing obvious—just silent stone, contorted shapes half-swallowed by cracked soil and vine-like roots that moved slightly with the breeze.
Eliza walked forward, hands in pockets, her gaze dragging across the terrain. Deep in thought. Distant. Like someone chasing ghosts.
Harper frowned.
"I thought this was just buried ruins," Kaede said quietly, approaching. "There's no mana field. Not even low-rank ambient pulses."
Eliza turned to the group, "This terrain... it's fake."
"Is that... bad?" Seth asked, squinting. "Because I don't see any glowing doors or cult statues saying 'Come on in.' Just rocks. Lots of emotionally repressed rocks."
Harper flipped open her tablet, scanned the terrain—and frowned. "This doesn't make sense. There's no mana trace, no energy field, not even seismic bounce-back. The ground's... pretending."
"Pretending?" Kaede repeated, brows lifting.
"I mean the rock formation isn't naturally formed. It's like… a shell. Something's under us.
Harper tapped the screen. "It's faking being solid rock. I think we're standing on a roof."
Seth blinked. "So what—you're saying we've been roofied by a mountain?"
Everyone stared at him.
"Not what I meant. Bad phrasing. You know what, carry on."
Eliza stepped forward, her eyes scanning the cracks. Her gloved hand reached toward the stone—and stopped mid-air. Her voice dropped to a murmur.
"why hide and yet I can feel you"
Before tension could mount any further, Ivana cracked her neck and groaned.
This is all just bull shit.
Harper raised a finger. "Hold on—let's not punch the—"
Harper blinked. "Uh, what're you—?"
Too late.
Ivana drew back her fist. Her eyes flashed blue as a dragon's growl echoed from her body . She struck the earth.
The punch exploded downward with a thunderous boom, splitting the surface like shattering glass. Tremors ran through the plateau as the impact rippled in all directions. A blue flame crackled from her knuckles, surging through the fracture like a pulse of divine wrath.
Chunks of stone blew away. A yawning void opened beneath their feet.
"Shit!" Harper shouted as the ground gave way.
"Ask me again when my spine regains feeling," Harper groaned as the fall ended, almost five hundred meters underground.
No alarms. No shifting gears. Just stone, thick air, and the eerie sound of dust settling.
The light came from faintly glowing lines carved into the walls—runes, symbols, writing. But none of it made sense at first glance.
And in the center, just beyond the statues, was a throne
A child sat on it and in front of him was a levitating daggar.
He looked no older than eight, his body still and pale, dressed in ancient robes. Dust covered his clothes, and his skin had a lifeless gray tone and his eyes were open.
No guards, no traps, not even dust. Just rows of carved stone, some cracked, others half-buried under vines except for the six statues surrounding them, two had no heads and the rest had holes in their chests where their hearts should be.
But what truly caught their attention wasn't the architecture.
It was the flowers.
Thousands of them.
They covered the entire courtyard, growing between slabs, sprouting from walls, even dangling from the ceiling above like ivy. Red, violet, pale blue—soft colors that shimmered faintly under the light.
Seth took a step back. "What the hell kind of art gallery is this?
"Don't get stupid," Ivana snapped.
Harper crouched beside a cluster, squinting at them. "They're not rooted. No stems. It's like they're just... sitting on the stone."
"That's not possible," Eliza said. She stepped ahead of the group, her long coat trailing behind her. Her face was unreadable as she looked around. "Spread out. Slowly.
Don't touch anything.
Eliza took a single step forward—and immediately stopped. Something was wrong. Her eyes flicked to the other side of the room , where the dagger floated just below the throne, suspended like a thought that refused to settle.
Its hilt was bone-white, slender, inlaid with a crimson eye that remained firmly shut.
No wind.
No hum.
No sound from the child seated on the obsidian throne above it.
Still, every instinct in her body screamed.
A pull she couldn't explain, she tried to resist the invisible attraction but it felt like it came from a much powerful being above her rank.
"Eliza," Harper called. "this place is—"
"Mom! " Eliza said softly.
Harper didn't turn back, maybe she misheard her because of the echo
Mom!
She took another step toward the throne.
But Ivana moved first.
The mercenary stepped in front of Eliza, blocking her path with a firm hand on her shoulder.
Eliza didn't resist, but her eyes didn't leave the child or the child
Ivana didn't move her hand. "Elizabeth"
Her breath caught in her throat as Ivana's voice echoed through the dim chamber, soft and haunting. "Elizabeth."
No one called her that. No one except her mother.
A strange chill ran down Eliza's spine. She turned slowly toward Ivana. The hardened mercenary stood tall and poised, yet something in her gaze had changed. Those sharp eyes—usually cold and calculating—now held a familiar warmth. A warmth Eliza hadn't seen in years.
In that moment, Eliza wasn't staring at her hired gun. She was staring into eyes that mirrored Virele's.
"Why... why did you call me that?
Ivana stepped closer, her hand rising gently to cup Eliza's cheek. "You've done well but I am sorry, you have to leave ," she said, her voice impossibly soft, almost reverent.
Eliza's knees buckled. The words struck her like a blade to the chest. "Mom?" she breathed.
Her mind reeled. The one she had tried so desperately to resurrect. The reason she poured billions into these expeditions. Virele—her mother—who vanished without a trace years ago, only for her corpse to be found in a ruined wasteland no one could explain. A powerhouse beyond the SSS rank. A black-ranked existence. The strongest... and yet, even she had fallen.
Tears almost welled in Eliza's eyes. Her arms moved on their own, wrapping tightly around Ivana. The embrace was warm, grounding, yet laced with a surreal tension.
Then, everything shattered.
"What the heck are you doing, Eliza?" Ivana's voice snapped—harsher, grounded, real.
Eliza pulled back instantly.
Ivana was staring at her, bewildered. The warmth was gone. The glint in her eyes had faded. Just like that, the illusion vanished, leaving behind the soldier she knew.
Everyone was also staring, confused.
Eliza's heart pounded. Her mind swirled with confusion and dread. Had she imagined it? Hallucinated? But it felt too real—too precise. The name, the words, the voice.
Her breath grew shaky. Something was wrong. Deeply wrong.
Anything wrong ", Harper asked
Eliza's blood ran cold. She stood frozen for a heartbeat, then took a step back, her voice rising. "We have to get out. Now."
Before her foot touched the ground again, Ivana stepped into her path. "Why?" she demanded, "We just got here."
"I'll explain later!" Eliza hissed. "But we need to leave. This place… it's connected to her death."
That got their attention.
The mercenaries looked up from their idle positions, confused but alert. Harper stood slowly, his gaze shifting from Eliza to the walls.
"I saw her," Eliza continued, voice shaking. "My mother. I think… I think she warned me."
Ivana narrowed her eyes. "You're saying Virele? That Virele showed up here?"
A heavy silence settled. Everyone in the chamber had heard stories about Virele—one of the strongest beings in history. A black-ranked powerhouse who terrified even the SSS-class elites. Her disappearance had shaken the world, and when her corpse was discovered, surrounded by ruins eerily similar to this, no answers followed—only fear.
If she was afraid of this place
"But we haven't even—" kaede began.
"I don't care," Eliza snapped. " I thought I could find a clue about resurrection… maybe even find a way to bring her back. But if somehow, I can sense her presence, then this place isn't what I thought it was.
Ivana glanced at the walls, her grip tightening on her weapon. "Alright. Everyone, prep to move out. Now."
Heat suddenly passed through the ruins like a gust from a furnace. The ground trembled. Somewhere deep below, a muffled whoosh echoed upward.
And then, the flowers lifted.
They simply rose, slowly, like balloons filled with air, drifting upward and spinning in slow circles like a toxic distraction.
"What the hell...?" whispered Harper.
The youngster on the throne shifted abruptly, his fingers brushing hard against the granite throne and breaking it, and everyone felt compelled to kneel.
Then the daggar vanished
A+ ranked warriors like Ivana felt it instantly.
A flash of red. A whisper of steel.
Blood sprayed across the air.
Seth screamed and staggered backward. His arm hit the ground before he did. A clean cut at the shoulder, smooth and surgical. His armor hadn't even slowed the blade down.
Eliza froze, watching in horror as he fell to his knees, clutching the stump, mouth open in agony.
"No!" Harper shouted, trying to run to him.
The dagger moved again.
This time, it blurred past Mikhail.
For a split second, nothing happened—then his thigh ruptured in a bloom of red. The tendons were severed. He collapsed, crying out as his leg folded beneath him.
His peak strength meant nothing.
"Move, Harper!" Eliza cried, pulling her out of the blade's path a heartbeat before it sliced past them again.
It hovered in the air briefly, almost lazily, then turned toward them.
Not one of them could tell how it decided its targets. There was no pattern, no logic. Just judgment.
Eliza's hand shot to her side, reaching for a hidden weapon—only to stop.
Within the blink of an eye, kaede Seth and milk hail had fallen.
At the height of their affinity level (A-) or (B-),they were all powerful men whose strength outweighed the effect of a ballistic missile, also known as ballistic firepower warlords. They would undoubtedly be able to handle a S rank daggar when combined with Ivana's greatest power, but their presence seemed much stronger.
A sudden burst of heat erupted beside her.
Ivana.
She stepped forward, fists ablaze with pale blue fire.
Blue flames wrapped around her arms, spiraling in shimmering scales of energy. Her expression was fierce.
From her back, a searing blue flame erupted—coiling like a dragon, dancing like wind on a blade.
She launched herself at the dagger.
Their first clash shattered the air.
A shockwave thundered through the chamber, blowing stone dust in all directions. Ivana's fist connected with the dagger mid-air, knocking it slightly off trajectory. A direct hit—and yet, it didn't break. It didn't even crack.
For a moment, it looked like a star had descended to oppose the darkness.
The child on the throne finally shifted, like a demon waking up from slumber, he stared at the figures below him, then snapped his fingers.
The red flame above his palm detonated into a sea of serpents, each one shrieking like tortured souls as they lunged at Ivana —thousands of fire snakes binding together into a colossal spiral spear of destruction
Hmm! Useless mortals
Ivana instantly fell out of the sky like she had never been there
The red flame pierced through the blue dragon's skull.
The child got up from the throne, he raised his hand and waved it.
For a brief period, not only was there no light or oxygen to breathe, but the sun had also given way to darkness, making it seem as though the entire planet had been annihilated.
The entire ruin was totally demolished.