The darkness receded like a tide.

  In its place came a soft, ancient light.

  Erika slowly opened her eyes and found herself standing at the center of a vast circular stone chamber. The domed ceiling rose so high that its peak vanished from sight, embedded with countless crystal fragments no larger than fingernails. They radiated a warm, golden glow, making it impossible to tell whether they were lamps—or some kind of natural mineral formation.

  The air carried a strange scent.

  Sweet incense, heavy and lingering, mixed with the cold sharpness of metal. It felt like a temple fused with an alchemical laboratory. Every breath tightened her chest, as though she were inhaling fragments of history itself.

  The curved stone walls were covered in murals.

  They did not form a single narrative, but rather a series of separate yet subtly connected scenes:

  A colossal dragon coiled among clouds, exhaling three beams of light.

  A figure draped in a feathered cloak stood atop a mountain, flames blooming in both hands.

  Another, crowned and holding a scepter, stood beneath a sky woven with lightning and symbols.

  At their feet lay similar circular arrays—intricate and layered, like multi-tiered gears carved into stone.

  “So my hypothesis was correct.”

  The low voice, tinged with a Nordic accent, came from the far side of the chamber.

  Erika spun around, her heart tightening.

  A tall Caucasian man stood several meters away. His short blond hair reflected a cool sheen under the crystal light, and the lenses of his glasses caught faint golden glimmers. A heavy mountaineering pack hung from his shoulders, the straps pulled taut by its weight.

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  “Who are you?” Erika asked instinctively, her feet shifting apart as she steadied her balance.

  The man didn’t answer right away.

  Instead, he lowered his gaze and pulled a peculiar device from his pack—something between a telescope and a compass. Several thin, needle-like probes extended from it, their tips flickering with golden light.

  He rotated the device slowly. The needles trembled, as if sensing invisible currents in the air.

  “Energy field stabilized at 2.6,” he muttered. Then he looked up at her, his gaze sharp but curious.

  “You’re Erika Li.”

  Her chest tightened. “How do you know my name?”

  “Because I dreamed of you three nights ago,” he replied, his tone calm to the point of coldness.

  “You were standing before a glowing stone slab. And you were holding a jade pendant.”

  He gestured lightly toward her chest. “That one.”

  Erika instinctively covered the pendant, her expression hardening. “Who are you?”

  “Lucas White,” he said. “Physicist. University of Troms?, Norway.”

  As he spoke, he turned the device through the air again. This time, the probes vibrated more violently.

  “And I believe,” he continued, “that you and I have both been pulled into something far larger than we imagined.”

  “What kind of something?” Erika asked quietly.

  “A global energy anomaly,” Lucas replied, stowing the device with practiced calm.

  “Three days ago, auroral activity over Norway reached an unprecedented peak—its fluctuation frequency was wrong. That same day, similar disturbances appeared elsewhere: animal migrations across the Kenyan savanna, extreme thunderstorms in the Amazon, magnetic disruptions across the Asian highlands.”

  He paused.

  “On an energy map, they all point to the same pattern.”

  Erika studied him, unsure whether to trust a word he said.

  Nothing in his tone suggested fabrication—but the amount he knew was deeply unsettling.

  “And,” Lucas added, his gaze lingering on her pendant for a moment too long,

  “I suspect these phenomena are connected to an ancient, cross-cultural runic system.”

  Erika frowned. As a doctoral candidate in archaeology, she had only encountered such systems in scattered references—unsolved, controversial, incomplete.

  She was about to press him further when the air at the opposite end of the chamber rippled.

  Not wind.

  It was like the surface of water struck by an unseen force—except the “water” was air itself.

  The ripples intensified, forming the outline of an invisible vortex.

  Then space tore open.

  A dark裂 opened in midair, and from it stepped a tall, powerfully built Black man.

  He took one step forward, boots landing on the runic stone floor. His shoulders leaned slightly ahead of his center of gravity, his entire posture that of a predator poised to charge.

  At his waist hung a short blade, glowing with a deep blue sheen under the crystal light—not the reflection of metal, but something like fire dancing beneath its surface.

  Erika and Lucas tensed simultaneously.