Vaen walked quietly beneath the towering boughs of the Great Desolate Forest. Shadows danced across the forest floor, and somewhere in the distance, a beast howled. Heh!
The forest is divided into layers like a puzzle box: a dangerous core zone, two volatile inner zones—east and west—and the violent outer edges. He was well into the western inner zone now, heading for a place called the Tir'khal Basin. It was northeast of the Oasis Tent, where he'd been staying.
That morning, he'd paid ten Origin Stones to the tent keeper for another two months—well, for the poor child. He'd paid Tarun five Origin Stones and instructed him in a basic Qi Breathing technique. The boy, loyal but obviously afraid, had bowed deeply and asked no questions.
Vaen had not told him where he was headed.
Best that way, he thought.
Tarun had spoken enough the night before of the alleged old ruin—nothing, no traces of a civilization. The Arcanes. A race now extinct, their strength once culminating in mid Nascent Soul Realm. An achievement stunning in the Chaos Region, where such strength was now the realm of myth.
Vaen's boots crushed dry roots and twigs underfoot as he moved out of a narrow trail into a wide depression of rock and cracked earth: the Tir'khal Basin.
He halted, taking in the scene.
It was vast. The basin looked like a scar in the woods—a sunk bowl with jagged walls, patches of stubborn moss, and ancient cracks spreading across its surface like veins. Wind swept through the chasm like a whisper from another age.
He stood still and let his senses expand.
Tarun's voice returned indistinctly: "They say the ruin isn't a ruin at all. It's a secret realm… or maybe a building integrated into the land itself. They called it Arcane Sanctum."
Arcane Sanctum, Vaen repeated to himself. The name had weight. Not something mortals would call something. It was like a memory.
The Arcane were not the bloodline-obsessed humans Vaen grew up with. They were beings of pure elemental resonance—similar to elves from northern myths, but rooted in formations, reason, and ethereal discipline. They shaped Qi like an artist shapes color. And then they vanished. Consumed not by war or the passage of time, but by a single event: the rampage of a monstrous Origin Beast.
It woke up abruptly, Tarun said. It destroyed everything within a span of two days. The entire Arcane race, wiped out. Not even the beast survived. The world had already begun its degeneration; the Origin Qi no longer pure, no longer plentiful. Both predator and prey had burned too brightly for a world that could no longer sustain them.
Standing there in the wind-scoured basin, Vaen could almost feel it—the weight of that event, lingering like a specter.
He crouched low and placed his hand on the ground.
Cold.
Dry.
But beneath the surface—just—there was a hum. Not animals. Not wind. But of power. Leashed. Tethered. Alive.
They buried it, Vaen guessed. Whatever Sanctum is, it isn't dead. It's asleep.
His Heart pulsed in silent response. A strand of Tenebris Energy unfurled through his veins, almost by reflex.
He stood again and made his way to the eastern edge of the basin slowly. That rim seemed more. vacant. Not in shape, but in resonance. A curve in space was there, faint and all but traceless. If he hadn't been trained in ways of perception, he would've missed it entirely.
It didn't look like anything—a piece of gray rock and moss.
But the air above it was preternaturally quiet. As if something was holding it in place.
He reached out with his Dimensional Perception mentally. Lines of invisible force began to form—dense patterns, curling back on themselves. A self-sustaining array. Passive. Dormant. Waiting.
He didn't touch it. Not yet.
Instead, he sat cross-legged near a cluster of malformed rocks and let his mind settle.
If this really is Arcane Sanctum… What did they leave behind?
Soul techniques?
Formations?
Spiritual structures beyond Nascent Soul logic?
A part of him wished to learn—not for dominance, but for understanding. The Tenebris Energy Path he now walked already separated him from the world he inhabited. The people of this land were bound by crude Qi and crude ambition. But the Arcane. they sought balance, not domination.
Possibly, in their teachings, he could find a means to develop himself more. A path of purifying Tenebris through discipline, rather than chaos.
But danger hung like a curtain over everything. If others were to find out what he searched for, it would bring not potential—but sTirfe.
He lay back on the chill stone for a moment, eyes closed.
Again the wind rustled, whispering through the dead grass.
He was in no hurry.
Whatever secret the Arcane had hidden in this broken basin—it had waited centuries.
It could wait.