Chapter 5 – Fear

Several figures stopped a few meters from the base of the Ziggurat.

“Kaelen, are you sure about this?”

One of them asked, his voice muffled by the wind whipping against his face.

The figure who spoke had a robust build. Nearly two meters tall, his thick tail and scaled body blended into the darkness, giving him a threatening presence.

A cloth was tied around his snout to filter the dust, leaving only his amber eyes exposed.

The group, made up of five members, looked identical.

On their bodies, they carried bluish crystals that emitted just enough light to keep them from losing sight of one another in the darkness of the desert.

Besides allowing them to see where they stepped, avoiding traps and pockets of quicksand, the crystals also helped repel monsters that lurked beneath the gray surface of the dunes.

“We have no other choice. We are under direct orders from the Tribal Chief.” The leader replied without taking his eyes off the objective.

Even as he said that, hesitation was clear in his voice.

Kaelen didn’t want to be here either.

Two weeks ago, what happened in this place was enough to frighten every local inhabitant of the desert.

The Ash Desert, always silent and unchanging, had been shaken by an earthquake that nearly collapsed the underground chambers and living quarters of his people and other tribes that dwelled beneath the sands.

When the dust settled, it was already there.

An immense artificial mountain had appeared in the heart of the desert as if by magic.

After two weeks of absolute vigilance, nothing had entered or left those walls, and the tension reached its limit.

The tribal leaders could no longer ignore the mountain of black stone.

They needed to know whether it was a threat.

Because of that, it didn’t take long before they began sending their own scouts to observe it more closely.

Yet no door opened.

No army marched out.

For fourteen days, nothing happened.

And the silence only made it worse.

Today, that was about to change.

Kaelen’s group wasn’t there just to look again. The tribe had given clear orders to attempt direct contact with whatever was inside that thing.

But deep down, he knew they were the first sacrifice to discover whether the structure was inhabited, and whether its owner was a silent neighbor… or the end of their species.

His job today was to knock on the gate and wait for an answer.

Or for death.

His attention returned to the gigantic gates, feeling like a worm before a mountain.

“It’s huge…” one of them whispered, touching the cold surface of the gate with the tip of his bone spear. “I’ve never seen anything like this. Not even the deepest chambers of the nest come close.”

Before the group, the colossal iron gates remained closed.

They were massive, forming a metal barrier that made the scouts look tiny.

There were no signs of guards, no sound of movement from within.

Only silence.

Kaelen nodded, staring toward the top of the wall kilometers above, trying to catch any movement in the heights, but it was far too distant to see anything.

The structure of black blocks rose toward the sky, its gigantic, smooth walls without a single groove, preventing them from peering inside.

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“Prepare yourselves.” Kaelen ordered, his hand tightening around his own spear. He raised his arm, hesitating for a second.

He was about to knock on the door of something unknown.

Gathering his courage, he struck the gate once.

The impact produced a dull sound that seemed to be swallowed by the immensity of the black metal.

He waited, his heart pounding in his chest.

Nothing happened.

The wind was the only reply.

Kaelen struck a second time, harder now.

The sound echoed a little farther, but the structure felt like a dead mountain.

He stopped, his hand trembling slightly on the weapon’s shaft. Kaelen glanced back at the other four scouts.

Uncertainty was clear in their amber eyes.

He hesitated — should he knock a third time, or was the silence an order to leave?

CREEEEEAAAACK!

Suddenly, the sound of the iron gates opening exploded outward, tearing through the air like the roar of a colossal beast awakening.

The vibration in the ground was so intense that the sand beneath their feet jumped. One of the scouts swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple moving visibly beneath his scaled neck.

The group clenched their spears so tightly that the leather grips creaked. They stepped back three paces in unison, eyes locked on the crack in the gate that was beginning to open.

Then, a figure stepped out.

The figure was so small it barely reached Kaelen’s knees. It looked like some kind of bat-homunculus. Its skin was pale, almost translucent, with disproportionately large ears drooping to the sides.