Jack exhaled, his breath visible despite the lack of cold. The atmosphere was thick and heavy as if something unseen had pressed on existence itself. The faint glow of the shifting glyphs along the obsidian ruins cast eerie reflections across the cracked ground, but it wasn't light as he understood it—it was energy, pulsing in unnatural waves, undulating like a heartbeat that did not belong to anything living.
He took his first step forward, the sound oddly muted, as if the ground sought to swallow all traces of his presence. He moved carefully, his senses sharpened, his golden eyes scanning the desolate ruins that stretched before him. This place was supposed to be empty, abandoned—but he could feel it. Something was here.
