In a distant, remote part of the empire, lay the ruins of a city not marked on any map. In the center of a raised, circular stone platform appeared a young man with short blond hair, his eyes covered by a black blindfold. He raised his head and looked around before saying, “How old was that teleportation scroll?”
Ciaran looked down at the ground he was standing on. It must have been a very clean, white stone a long time ago, but now there were holes and pits from the erosion of time, with some cracks filled with dirt and moss. A few sprouts peaked out here and there, being blown by the wind that was much colder than the the breeze he felt at the duchy. Wherever this was, it was cold and barren. He couldn’t hear a whisper of a human voice, nor the sounds of any animals or insects. The wind blew through the crumbling, eroded buildings all around the square. Some had entire walls missing, while others had blasted holes. Some were relatively intact, with the white stone being eroded in many places due to time. It made one wonder what happened here that not even a skeleton could be found.
Ciaran knelt down and touched the stone, sensing a broken inscription that was once engraved on this stone platform. It was likely a teleportation circle, though it had long since stopped working. He wasn’t sure whether someone destroyed the inscription on purpose, or whether the stone eroding was what broke it. The teleportation scroll he used was different — it specified this location, but the destination was written by the mage that engraved it on the scroll.
Some of Ciaran’s ancestors, those that lived and died during their golden age when the blessing was still active, had become great figures in history. Some of them were powerful mages, though Ciaran wasn’t sure whether that scroll was made by his ancestor, or gifted to them by someone they knew. Regardless, he whispered a silent thank you to whoever made that scroll and placed it in the treasury.
He stood up and walked forward, being careful with where he stepped. He wouldn’t have been so wary if it were just humans that were absent from this city. The absence of animals and insects, though, worried him. He walked through the square and toward a large building. It was the size of a city block, and the crumbling walls had traces of intricate carvings and large pillars. He wondered what its purpose was — a city hall? The headquarters of a guild? Or maybe it was once a palace.
He walked up the steps to the large, gaping hole at the entrance where enormous doors must have once stood. At the top of the tall stairs, he turned around and looked out at the city. It was much bigger than he expected. To the left, he could make out the top of a forest in the distance. To the front, the city kept extending to the horizon, and to the right, he could see the edges of a big lake.
He seemed to have stumbled upon the best hiding place. A city as big and old as this, who would come here? As he turned around, grateful for Martha and Penelope for finding that scroll and giving it to him, he froze. Through the entrance of the building, at the very back of the enormous hall, was a throne. On the wall behind the throne hung a tattered tapestry. It was old and worn, but Ciaran could still make out what was woven — A sun shining its rays down on a blooming, red rose. The rays transformed into a golden liquid which dripped onto the petals, then fell down to a golden river from which the rose grew.
Ciaran knew where he was. All thoughts of this ruined city being a good hiding place vanished. In its place was a thought laced with dread.
Why did our treasury have a scroll that teleported someone to the heart of the Lost Empire?
~|(+)|~
Ciaran walked through the enormous room. It must have once been a marvel, but now all that was left was dust and crumbled, pitted stone. On the left and right sides of the room, though, were hand-painted murals that took up the wall from floor to ceiling. It must have told the history of the Lost Empire, at least from their perspective.
He himself didn’t know much about it, but it was mandatory for anyone learning the history of the continent to learn about it. The Lost Empire wasn’t actually an empire — it was a large city that claimed it was an empire, with a name that was erased from history and memory due to an ancient magic spell, though the caster was unknown. The mural began on the left side and depicted a figure in white robes with golden hair and eyes standing on a pedestal, shining light onto the masses below.
Ciaran knew who this was — this was the “Holy Emperor” of the Lost Empire, whose people once touted him as a god. In reality, he was an arrogant, not so talented member of the imperial family at the time. This wasn’t common knowledge, though — Ciaran’s family library had historical records from that time, so they knew part of the truth. The public was never told the true identity of the holy emperor so that the imperial family’s prestige and reputation wasn’t stained by him. The holy emperor, upset that he wasn’t in the line of succession for the throne and arrogant enough to think that he deserved to rule the land, went off to establish his own nation. This nation, however, became little more than the base of a cult that worshiped him.
In another part of the mural was a display of human sacrifice. The Holy Emperor sat on a throne looking down at the people below him, who offered him a maiden on an altar. Gold that was melted in a burning furnace and boiling in a large cauldron was poured over her while her limbs were secured with chains. The gold that fused with blood and flesh would be gathered by the people and poured into a jewelry mold, then shaped by a master craftsman. Ciaran touched the wall where a faceless man was holding up a beautiful necklace while kneeling before the Holy Emperor. Then two attendants, faceless women in white robes, took the necklace and carefully placed it around the neck of the man on the throne.
While he knew that the cult the “Holy Emperor” established sacrificed innocents, there was never any news on how or why they did so. Ciaran thought that no explanation could ever justify the reason to do such a cruel, horrific act. He wondered what kind of twisted mind that “Holy Emperor” must have had to order someone to paint a mural like this, displaying such acts as if it was something to show off. He turned away from the mural on the left wall and walked to the mural on the right, surprised to see something very different from the first one.
The right mural, however, was much more damaged than the left mural. The left mural had some places where the wall was scraped or had a small hole, but it was still legible and easy to make out the original painting. The mural on the right had accumulated much more damage. Despite the damage, he could make out one thing — in the center of the wall was a building that must be a representation of the one he stood in at the moment, and on top of one of the spires was a large beast. At first he thought it was a dragon, but on closer inspection, it only had two legs, so he understood it was a wyvern. Ciaran scoffed to himself. He said softly, “What would a dragon be doing in this disgusting place anyway?”
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
While dragons were ancient creatures considered to be more powerful and intelligent than humans, some even living for thousands of years, wyverns were not much greater than wild animals. They didn’t have the intelligence or power of dragons, not even the lifespan, but they could breathe fire and fly, as well as bear the weight of one or two people. Mages over a thousand years ago used to tame them before they became endangered after they kept dying in the many wars that had been held between rival forces — warring nations, rival guilds, or even just two factions of mages fighting and killing each other. In the process, the wyverns they tamed would be killed in the heat of battle, making their sight in the present day rather rare.
In the mural, the wyvern was much larger than they were usually told to be in history books, making Ciaran wonder what great mage used to live here, and how evil they must have been. With such a great mage, though… how did this “empire” crumble?
No book or historical record ever mentioned it. The mages in the empire sensed great waves of magic power coming from somewhere, on the level of a natural disaster, before the name of the Lost Empire was wiped from every person’s memory and erased from every written text and map, along with its location. The waves of magic disappeared as if abruptly cut off, and anyone that tried to make contact with the Lost Empire henceforth failed. No person that was in the Lost Empire was ever contacted or heard from ever again. After the name and location of the city was erased due to some mysterious magic, it was never found, existing only in records and stories, the mystery lost to time.
Ciaran took a look at the murals one last time before glancing over to the throne. It was covered with gold and detailed designs, and was the same throne the holy emperor must have once sat on. He couldn’t help his curiosity, so he approached it, but he didn’t intend to sit in it. No, he wanted to burn it to the ground, but he decided against it. He knew too little about the reason this place was cut off from the rest of the world. Until he knew more, it was better to leave it alone. As he walked closer, he noticed something he hadn’t seen before — a gaping hole in the back of the throne.
Curious, he walked behind the throne and spotted a dusty, intricate sword embedded into the wall. The throne had hidden it from view until now. Ciaran closed the distance, step by step, then knelt before the sword, admiring its quality. He had seen some of the swords in their treasury and thought it looked a bit similar. It wasn’t until he leaned closer to the hilt of the sword that he saw it — a coat of arms with a dragon and a withered rose standing in front of a field of stars.
It was their family’s crest, and from the everything he’d seen, Ciaran was shocked as he realized that his ancestor had once been here. He looked at the hole in the back of the throne and wondered whether his ancestor had killed the holy emperor or not, but another question soon surfaced.
If the holy emperor was killed by his ancestor, then where was the skeleton? The dread Ciaran had been trying to ignore began to grow. He stood up and was about to leave, but then hesitated. In the end, although he never really practiced swordsmanship, he still pulled his ancestor’s sword out of the wall, feeling more reassured with a proper weapon in his hands.
As he ran out of the palace and down the steps, his pace picked up along with his questions. He ran through the city and looked through every place he could, trying to find any human remains at all—a skeleton, a trace of fabric, a letter or note, maybe even a spare bone or skull. He didn’t really want to see human remains, but his intuition told him that the lack of them was an ominous sign. As he ran through the large city, the sun climbed through the sky before descending and beginning to set.
The moment the sun touched the horizon, the sky painted with vivid, saturated oranges and deep blues and purples and a hint of red, people appeared. Ciaran was walking down a residential street that used to be a market. One second he was alone with only the whistles of the wind to accompany him, and the next, a ray of sunlight shone through the gap of a building, and the empty street came to life. The buildings were intact, the windows were clean, and people bustled from one corner to another, laughing and talking with each other.
Ciaran watched, stupefied, as a plump woman in a simple dress, her hair tied back into a bun, carried a basket to a vendor selling vegetables. A small child ran past him, his mother chasing after him and calling his name. They were all speaking in an old dialect of the Silios Empire’s common language, so he had to concentrate to understand what they were saying. He was shocked. But after looking closer to them, he noticed that everything was just a little transparent. None of this was real.
Ciaran didn’t move, watching in silence as the ghosts of the past lived their ordinary life. He approached the vegetable vendor and waved his hand in front of his face, but there was no reaction. He tried to touch him, but his hand passed through as if nothing was there. Ciaran frowned, then began to run back to the square he came from, curious about what he would see in front of the palace, though a part of him had an idea and wanted to see if he was right. As he ran, he realized the distance he came was a bit far. He ran past so many people on the street, but the closer he came to the square, the more solemn the atmosphere became, until he noticed people in white robes walking to someplace, their heads bowed and their hands clasped together.
He sped up and turned the corner, seeing the moment boiling, molten gold was poured onto a woman chained to the altar. Everyone else was chanting something he couldn’t make out, but no one stopped or helped her. Ciaran’s breath stuck in his throat as her screams of anguish filled the air, before her vocal chords were burned and she couldn’t make a sound anymore. The screams were so similar to what he heard not long ago.
The flashes of memories appeared at the forefront of his mind, intrusive and unwarranted, but very vivid. The screams of the dying and the pleas for help, the blood gurgling in people’s throats and the sound of flesh being torn. His family massacring innocents and then each other, their claws swiping —
Ciaran hit his head with the hilt of the sword he was holding. He hissed at the pain, but it snapped him out of it. He couldn’t spiral right now. It was still hard for him to breathe, hard to think clearly, but he couldn’t let himself go, not when the situation was so unclear. Instead, he turned his gaze away from the altar, not trusting himself to not lose his mind again. Well, it seemed his idea from earlier was right — in the square was the human sacrifice ritual he’d seen on the mural. As the sky darkened and the sun set, the ghosts became more transparent.
Ciaran looked at the steps of the palace far away and saw a tall figure in golden robs stepping down. Before him was an old man in a white robe, the edges sown with golden patterns far more intricate than any of the other cultists, kneeling while saying something to the figure. He couldn’t hear anything from where he was, but he was sure that the man walking down the steps was the holy emperor.
As the old man knelt and spoke to the holy emperor, the other cultists gathered the gold that had combined with the blood and flesh of the woman they just killed, then carried it away somewhere else. The old man then held something up to the emperor, but before the holy emperor could reach out to grab it, the sun completely set and night set in. The figures of the ghosts vanished, but not completely, for in their places were shadowy figures with distorted features. They had all become ghouls, indistinguishable from one another. Ghouls, the dark, corrupted souls of the dead that never passed on. Before Ciaran had time to notice that their attention had all turned to him, he heard a roar that shook his bones and hurt his ears.
He turned his head toward the direction it came from and saw something that made curse. An enormous wyvern climbed up around one of the spires of the palace in front of him, its wings flapping as its claws gripped the stone beneath. In the moonlight, its skin and scales were transparent, allowing him to see through to its skeleton. He didn’t have time to wonder why the wyvern was so different from the other ghouls, however, since the creature, alongside the other human ghouls around him, launched themselves at him with a mind-shattering wail.
