The winds had changed.
Rael stood among the ruins of a city long dead that is buried under centuries of ash and despair. Black stone pillars thrust from the ground like shattered teeth and memorials to a lost war. The air was heavy with silence of the kind that chokes instead of comforts.
The gate that he had left behind was gone. No portal, no light. Only shattered stones and dust.
But he wasn't alone.
He felt it first - a deep hum vibration in the ground, distant but intensifying. A beat.... a heartbeat.
Rael moved forward taking small steps, senses heightened. His cloak fluttered out behind him as if speaking in a language that he couldn't understand. This place was not abandoned -- it was waiting.
And then he saw it.
Carved into the stone floor was a huge sigil, its faintly glowing dull red light growing stronger as Rael stepped closer. It was timed to his own heartbeat. Something from long ago responded to him. Or saw him.
"Where is this place...." he said to himself.
A voice in the emptiness.
"Where the first prey was broken.... and the first predator was born."
Rael spun, hand on his sword. But there was no one. Only the caress of memory.
He followed a broken stairway that went under the remains. The further he traveled, the colder it grew not the temperature, but of something different. Something starving.
He entered a room - round, large, illuminated by dancing red runes inscribed along its walls. In the middle of the chamber was a stone coffin, its surface covered by innumerable chains.
And Rael experienced something.... familiar.
He approached.
The coffin shook slightly.
And a voice soft, womanly, shuddering with grief had invaded his thoughts.
"Why did you abandon me....?"
Rael's body stood still. Breath caught in throat. The voice.... it didn't sound new. It sounded like someone he couldn't even recall, yet felt a type of bond too.
An unremembered vow. An unspoken guilt.
The chains clanged insanely. The runes burst with bright red light, throwing hellish shadows on walls.
Then that ceased.
And the silence closed back in, deeper than before.
Rael stepped back. He felt like whatever was in there... wasn't supposed to be awakened. Not yet anyway.
But it had known him.
And now, it wouldn't forget.
He turned, running from the room, heart pounding. Behind him, the coffin throbbed once, like a heartbeat.
The hunt was starting all over again.
And Rael didn't know if he was still the hunter... or the prey all over again.