The crack in the earth is exactly where Mira said it would be.

Two days of hard travel through the wastes, dodging ash storms and the occasional shadow-creature, and now you stand at the edge of a rift that splits the ground like a wound. Stairs—ancient, crumbling, but unmistakably constructed—spiral down into the darkness.

“The Sunken Library,” Mira says. “Or what’s left of it.”

You peer into the depths. The stairs vanish into shadow after perhaps fifty feet. A faint glow emanates from somewhere far below—blue-white, like starlight trapped underground.

“What happened to it? Why is it sunken?”

“The stories say it used to be a tower. The tallest in the land. Seraphine the Scholar built it to house all the knowledge of the world.” Mira’s voice is flat, reciting facts without emotion. “Then something happened. The tower fell. Not outward, but inward. Down. As if the earth swallowed it whole.”

“When?”

“Three hundred years ago. Give or take.”

The same time as the Founding. The same time the founders were bound to the gem.

You look at the stairs again. Something about them feels familiar. A memory that isn’t yours—a woman’s hand on this same railing, descending with purpose, with hope.

Seraphine.

“I have to go down there.”

Mira nods. If you told her everything, she steps forward with you. If you held back, she stays at the edge. “The things that guard this place… they’re not like anything I’ve hunted. Be careful.”

You take the first step. The stone is cold beneath your feet.

The second step.

The third.

And then the darkness swallows you whole.