Jin had learned two very important things this week.
First: goats are not to be trifled with.
Second: being worshipped is exhausting.
Ever since the sky-serpent—"Valthuun the Great Flappy Danger Noodle" as Jin privately renamed it—had soared above the village and locked eyes with him like it remembered every spicy detail of their last encounter, life had gotten significantly weirder.
The villagers now saw him less as a strange guest and more like some kind of prophet. Which sounded cool in theory, until the elderly started asking him to bless crops, heal stubbed toes, and explain why lightning didn't strike sideways. Jin's best answer was usually a forced smile and some mumbling while waving his hands vaguely in the air like he was channeling divine wind spirits. Somehow, it worked. Or at least, they kept bringing him root vegetables in appreciation.
But deep inside, Jin couldn't shake the feeling.
That serpent hadn't greeted him. It hadn't beamed with fond celestial regard. It had stared him down. The kind of look predators give when you accidentally walk into their den and tip over their favorite bone pile.
And it bugged him.
So the next morning, he packed a satchel—crystals, charcoal, some dried fruit, and one surprisingly loyal chicken who refused to leave his side—and decided to hike back up the mountain.
"I have unfinished business," he told no one in particular.
Professor Beakley clucked in solemn agreement.
The journey back up the mountain was longer than Jin remembered. Partly because he was now taking it uphill without the aid of sheer terror adrenaline, and partly because the path had changed. Where once the cliffs were jagged and loose, they now seemed smoother, less forbidding.
Strange. Hadn't he tumbled through here in a near-death blur?
Eventually, he arrived at the spot.
The ledge. The cliff. The spot where he had dangled by a bush and then slipped into salvation.
He found the bush. Or at least one like it—shriveling in the sun, leaves half-gnawed by something insectoid.
And below it?
Just a cave. A regular, mossy, slightly unimpressive cave. No torches. No smooth, worked stone. No glowing panels or giant sentient crystals. Just stalactites and bird droppings.
Jin rubbed his eyes. "Okay… what?"
He stepped inside.
Cold stone greeted him. Dust rose from the floor in lazy puffs. His torch flickered, casting long shadows on walls carved not by intelligent hands but by time and dripping water.
No sphere. No Keeper. No console. No murals of interdimensional geometry battles.
The place was empty.
Like the entire ruin—alien tech and all—had never existed.
Jin ran his hand along the stone. "No way. This was here. I saw it. I learned stuff! I got the heart-thumpy geometry magic gland to prove it!"
He sat down on a rock, staring into the darkness.
The memory was too detailed to be a hallucination. The runes, the visions, the Keeper's voice—he could still hear its eerie melodic chime in his ear if he focused. But now there was… nothing. No signs it had ever been real.
Unless it hadn't been "real" in the traditional sense.
He stood and paced, muttering. "Okay, okay… think. Maybe it was a pocket dimension? Maybe it was keyed to the crystal's resonance. Maybe I activated it the same way people butt-dial a portal."
He pulled the crystal from his pouch.
Still warm. Still pulsing faintly.
He held it up. "Alright, you glowing mystery nugget. Do your thing. Beam me up. Widen the rift. Summon the ancient PowerPoint presentation."
Nothing.
He shook it.
Still nothing.
A drip of water echoed behind him.
Jin sighed, defeated.
Then he noticed something: faint grooves near the far wall. He rushed over, brushing moss aside. They weren't letters, but they were intentional. Spirals, triangles, all scrawled in a single looping movement. Hand-done, not machine-perfect like before.
Someone else had been here.
But it hadn't been the same technology. This was someone trying to replicate what Jin had seen. Or remember it.
"Maybe it's not that the ruins vanished," he said quietly. "Maybe they were never here in the physical world in the first place."
He left the cave before sunset.
As he descended the mountain, the wind shifted again. It always did before Valthuun appeared.
And sure enough, high above the village, the sky rippled.
The serpent descended like a thundercloud with wings, its sinuous body catching the dying sun in shimmering scales. This time, it came slower—graceful, floating, less like a missile and more like a monarch observing its court.
The villagers fell to their knees once more, chanting in rhythmic pulses.
But Jin didn't kneel. He watched.
Valthuun drifted in a wide circle, its body coiling around the old temple tree that stood at the village edge. Its eyes passed over everyone.
Then locked onto him.
Jin stood tall and whispered under his breath, "Yeah, I remember you too, buddy."
The serpent's gaze didn't feel like curiosity this time. It felt... cautious. Calculating. Like it was trying to puzzle him out. Like it knew Jin had gone back.
And maybe it didn't like that.
The villagers cried out a word again and again: Zhaat'mor!Zhaat'mor!
He turned to one of the younger boys, kneeling next to a shrine plate of berries and polished stones. "Hey... what's that mean?"
The boy, surprisingly, tried to answer. He put a finger to his mouth, then gestured up to the sky, and mimicked falling—arms flailing.
Then he tapped Jin's chest, exactly where the mana core pulsed.
Falling skyfire.
Star eater.
Trespasser.
Jin's mouth went dry.
Valthuun hadn't attacked him before because it was malevolent. It had attacked because he'd stumbled into something sacred, something forbidden.
The crystal. The ruins. The knowledge.
They weren't gifts. They were breaches.
And now?
Now Jin carried something the world might not have wanted woken.
Later that evening, as the stars dusted the sky and the chants finally faded into lullabies and firelight, Jin sat alone on a rock at the village edge. He stared at the crystal in his palm, feeling its steady rhythm beat in time with his own.
Something was coming. He could feel it. Whether Valthuun was a guardian, a warden, or something more complicated, Jin knew one thing for certain:
The ruin hadn't just hidden itself. It had reacted to him.
It had let him in.
And now, it was waiting.