The facility loomed ahead of them, an imposing structure that dwarfed anything Aira had seen in this or even her own world. It was enormous, a testament to the advaeology and resources of the old times. Before everything had gone awry. Only the most powerful mages in Aira's world could struct buildings of such magnitude, and evehey rarely did.

  The pce was immense, with its roots built into the side of a mountain. Probably, a reasonable part of it was hiding within the cliff. But besides that, it occupied a siderable part of the whole valley, rising in the sky higher than the ridge on which Aira and Li camped the previous night.

  Two women approached the building cautiously. Their footsteps were utterly lost in the vast emptihat surrouhe facility. The entrance, shaped like a massive archway, lured them. Once-polished metal was now tarnished and covered in moss. With vines snaking their the walls and trees growing in random spots on balies and s, reg the structure bit by bit.

  Acc to Li's story, it has beeuries since humans occupied that building. But it still stood there and hasn't crumbled. Truly magical.

  Carefully stepping closer to the intimidating arch, they checked the surrounding area. Now, they stood out like pieces on a tabletop game board. For some bizarre reason, the pza in front of the facility remained free of trees. Still, there were no signs of other people nearby, which was both a relief and a cause for . If not humans, maybe some other dangers were lurking inside?

  Aira checked her senses. Nothing there as well.

  As they stepped through the entrahe scale of the interior became apparent. The first hall they entered was vast, with ceilings so high they seemed to touch the sky. Skylights, with gss that shattered long ago, allowed beams of sunlight to pierce through, illuminating the dust motes that floated zily in the air. Debris covered the hall's floor—broken pieaery, crumbled g and decorations, unreizable remnants of furniture that had long since decayed.

  "By the Elders' breath, this pce feels like it's been frozen in time..." Li ented, her voice eg in the cavernous space. "It seems that not a soul has crossed these floors in years."

  Aira nodded, her eyes sing their surroundings. The pce sent shivers up and down her spiestament to the might of the old ones, who built all that without magic.

  Li read Aira like an open book. "Magnifit, right? And if this pce still holds as, we'd better uhem! Maybe they will help you with your... quests."

  She gnced around, her eyes narrowing as she took ient of the destru. "But first, we o find our way deeper inside. Where it isn't such a mess!"

  As they moved cautiously through the halls, stepping over twisted metal beams and piles of rubble, Li recited some of the myths of the civilization before the fall. It was a straime—a time of wonder and miracles. And Li's voice trembled with awe.

  Most of the knowledge of old age was limited either by the ck of surviving dots or by the scious choice of the Elders not to aggravate the uneducated townsfolk with things they couldn't prehend. It was good enough that people could and were allowed to use some of the gadgets and rger maery sged from facilities like this one.

  "You know," said Li, "It always boggled my mind that we've got all this old tech still tig along after all these years. When some of it snaps in our hands, we don't know the first thing about fixing it. Only hope is finding aash."

  Aira looked at her panion with . And then took in her surroundings with a new level of apprehension.

  If she had judged the ce to find anything worth their time by the state of this facility, the heritage of the past would have been mostly pilfered by now. During the turies sihis civilization's dee, survivors had sged everything they could grab. And the rest was destroyed either by time or by act.

  This... building... whatever its purpose was, wasn't an exception. By the broken remnants, Aira could figure out that ages ago, many of the walls were covered with panels, simir to her tablet. Most of them were removed, though only the unusable parts remained. Snatches of unusable wires hung here and there. It was clear that the facility had once been a hub of activity, but now it was evehan a shadow of its former self.

  Aira was astonished by this dispy of power and teology as much as Li. Maybe even more. The approach was absolutely different in her world, with magiinating all aspects of everyday life, governance, war, and everything else. They wouldn't even sider creating something like that when there were simpler solutions.

  But she could imagihat humans of this world had to get creative in the absence of are powers.

  As they ventured further, there was even more evidence of the facility's decay. Room after room, hall after hall. Some of them were as vast as the first, others smaller. Still, they saw the same sery everywhere. In pces, ceiliions had colpsed, creating treacherous piles of debris, they had to navigate carefully—remnants of old tech, furniture, and some unreizable objects. The air was thick with the smell of mold and rust, and the sound of dripping water echoed eerily through the space.

  "Stay close," Li whispered, her haing lightly on the hilt of her knife. "Spirits in the shadows... who knows what's lurking in these halls? Never seen an undead in pces like this, but it isn't that I frequehem."

  Aira nodded, her senses on high alert. However, her powers didn't warn her about anything alive, hiding anywhere nearby. Or anything undead, if she could hope the signature of an undead being. And unlike Li's town, this pce was devoid of that type of energy produced and used by human maery. It has all beey and dead for a very long time.

  They reached a rge set of doors at the end of the hall, their once-shiny surfaow dull and covered in grime. It seemed that the humans of the olden times had to make everything grand. It was as if they were defying some higher forces, showing them they could achieve more and rise to the skies.

  With some effort, Li pushed one of the doors open, and they stepped into another cavernous room. This one seemed to have been a tral hub of sorts, with a rge, circur trol panel in the ter and rows of desks and chairs scattered around. Many of the tables were overturned, and a few a dots covered with some kind of protective film littered the floor. The strange substan them probably was the only reason some papers survived. Everything else, books, sheets, and fabrics, were fragmented, with only small pieces remaining.

  Aira stepped, her boots g over the debris, and noticed something like the spine of a book. It probably had some color in it turies ago. But now, all that remained was an ugly dark-brown shade of the past. She tried to pick it up, but it crumbled in her hands as soon as Aira touched it.

  She looked at the surrounding area ahe floor was covered with the same type ments. There had to be hundreds of books and dots here. Maybe even thousands. Su immereasure trove of knowledge was astonishing to Aira. But now, everything was lost. Only a few words could be deciphered from the fragments.

  "This must have been some sort of aer," Li said, her voice filled with awe. "You know, my grandfather used to spin tales about pces like this. Said the folks here had madgets than we'd know what to do with—used them from dawn till dusk like it was nothing. It has got me rattled like a loose gear just thinking about it. Maybe we still find something here? At least some information? Even if the ces are slim after all these years of decay."

  Unfortunately, Li's predecessors had vandalized all the te the room. The ss shattered, trol panels ripped apart, and wires dangled like severed veins. Everything usable was removed long ago, aher Aira nor Li could decipher the writing.

  P some of her are power into the devices, Aira tried to find at least some tech that survived the time. But, as, it brought s. The destru was thh, deliberate.

  "Well, root me sideways," Li muttered, kig a piece of debris out of her way. "Whoever came here before us made sure nothing could be salvaged."

  Aira sighed and nodded. "Let's keep looking," she wrote, showing her journal to Li.

  ***

  They spent the rest of the day mapping the vast building. The facility seemed endless, a byrinth e and small rooms interected by winding corridors. Aira and Li found storerooms filled with rusted tools, offices with disiing furniture, and bs that had long since been looted of anything valuable.

  Despite the decay, they mao find at least some useful items: a few small tools, some intact cables, and a couple of old but serviceable fshlights. Aira was even able to charge them with her powers. The training of the past days wasn't in vain.

  By the time the suhey had covered a signifit portion of the facility's ground floor but had found no sources of power or intact tech. So, they chose one of the inner rooms for their temporary camp. A small office that even still had a door they could close for peaind. The room arsely furnished, with a single desk and a couple of chairs, but at least it was and dry, unlike some of the outer halls.

  Li set up a small campfire using some debris they had gathered. The flickering fmes cast a warm, f glow iherwise dark and cold room. Aira watched the fire, her mind rag with thoughts of their steps. She had to explore her powers more and find their limitations. But if there were people with access to the System in this world, she would have to find them. They may be her only hope for rec her old self and finding a way out.

  "We'll o be cautious," Li said, breaking the silence. "By the frost on the pihis pce should be clear of undead... but I wouldn't put a shadow past it. Anything happen in a ruin like this."

  "Anyway," Li tinued, "they tend to stay in the old cities, the destroyed areas of steel and crete where all humans are prohibited from going. But that doesn't mean we're pletely safe. In the end, like the a cities, this facility is also a remnant of the old world. Who knows what attracts them to these pces."

  She paused and looked at Aira. "Maybe you know?"

  Aira rolled her eyes.

  Aira nodded, appreciating the warning, and wrote: "So, are there aioween the humans and the undead."

  Li k was a discussion that had to happen at some moment, especially sidering their unlikely alliance. "I 't really add anything to what we already discussed," she said. "There are some legends from the past. And there is this shaky bahat exists today."

  "There are talks that undead are the old humans transformed," she tinued. "Like they lived for hundreds of years. There was some cataclysm that destroyed the old human world and split it into two: humans and undead. But to me, all that sounds like ales. Sometimes, something makes a human turn. Elder's beard, I've seen that ono one knows why that happens. At least, I was old. But thousands of humans turning ht? That sounds ridiculous."

  She paused as if sidering if it was reasoo tinue. "Before, it was the tradition to kill them on sight. I guess that's one of the things Garrick wao return when he came to power," she put her palms forward in front of her in a protective gesture. "It isn't anything you didn't know before. I mentiohat to you. But in the past years, there have been rumors of iations with the undead. Even some sort of trade alliance. Maybe that's one of the reasons the cil decred that all undead have to be safely delivered to the town? I don't know. And now it all doesn't really matter."

  Aira wrote: "What about this pce?"

  Li shrugged. "It's hard to say. Nobody knows its fun. Sometimes, we find facilities that weren't plundered. And even salvage w gadgets or at least spare parts. This one... It was known ages ago. Whoever picked through this pce st left it dry as an old stump—stripped everything down to the roots. That's one of the reasons it may be safer than other locations, no stray ranger party should go here. We patrol pces like this, but nobody goes inside."

  "But then," she tinued, "this pce is massive, and who knows what kind of secrets it holds? If we are lucky, maybe we'll find something worth our time. And we'll have a map of the pce if we o skedaddle in a hurry. At that's least something to keep us busy while we figure out our steps."

  Aira nodded, agreeing, her determination unwavering. She felt a strange e to this facility as if it held the key to her uanding of this world and her p it. She couldn't ect to any parts of it. Yet. But there was something there, like a dormant force, that her powers could awaken. Aira couldn't expin it, but she khey had to keep searg.