The jungle was impossibly quiet.
No birds, no insects—only the low whisper of wind moving through the canopy like breath through hollow stone. The light filtering down through the leaves was pale gold, fractured into ribbons that touched the moss-covered earth. It should have been beautiful. But the beauty felt wrong, like a painting left too long under rain.
Gray moved slowly between the trees, his boots sinking into the damp soil. Every step stirred the smell of rot and rain-soaked roots. The deeper he went, the more he felt the weight of something unseen pressing in from all sides.
He passed a fallen trunk split open by age. Fungi bloomed from the cracks, glistening faintly in the dim light. A thin thread of mist crept through the air, curling around his ankles as if trying to pull him back.
He ignored it.
His eyes caught on something ahead—a shape half-swallowed by the undergrowth. He brushed aside a curtain of vines and froze.
Stone. Smooth, carved, and impossibly old.
The surface bore faint ridges that might once have been letters or symbols, now worn into illegibility. He traced a finger across it, feeling the unnatural precision beneath the grime. "This isn't part of the jungle, It can't be." he murmured to himself. "It's… built."
He took a step back. As his gaze adjusted, he began seeing more of them. Fragments of walls jutting out from the earth. The faint outline of a staircase smothered by moss. Even the ground beneath his feet seemed too level, too deliberate.
A village. Or the bones of one.
A strange chill crawled up his spine.
Gray looked further down the slope. There were more shapes ahead—irregular, pale, clustered together. At first he thought they were stones. But when he knelt beside one, brushing away the mud, his breath hitched.
It wasn't stone. It was bone.
The ribs of something human, half-buried, fused with the roots that had grown through it. And once he saw one, he saw hundreds. Skeletons sprawled across the forest floor, some entangled together, some sitting upright as if frozen mid-prayer.
He stepped back, his chest tightening. The sight was endless—bodies turned to bone, melted into the land itself.
And yet the air didn't reek of death. It smelled… still. Preserved.
"What happened here?"
The question left his lips before he realized it. His own voice sounded foreign in the silence.
'Why does it feel like I've been here before...weird.'
He moved slowly among them, careful not to disturb the remains. Some skeletons were buried chest-deep in vines, others had roots coiled through their eye sockets. Nature hadn't consumed them—it had claimed them, made them part of itself.
A faint heat bloomed in his chest. The mark of the corruption pulsed softly under his armour, as if reacting to the place. He pressed his hand against it, trying to steady his breathing.
The forest felt… alive. Not in the way of trees and rivers—but aware. Watching.
He walked farther, the light thinning. Time lost meaning. He could no longer hear the others—only the steady rhythm of his own heartbeat and the faint hiss of wind sliding through the leaves.
Then the ground sloped again, leading into a clearing choked by ferns. And there, in the center, he saw it.
A skeleton kneeling. Hands clasped, head bowed, staring eternally upward.
Gray froze.
Something in him knew—knew—this posture. The tilt of the head, the placement of the hands, the reverence frozen into bone.
"No…" he whispered.
He turned slowly, scanning the rest of the clearing. Dozens of other skeletons were positioned the same way. Kneeling. Praying.
His pulse hammered in his ears.
He staggered back, shaking his head. "It can't be."
He squeezed his eyes shut, forcing himself to remember—the vision that had nearly torn his mind apart. The mountain. The villagers kneeling beneath a brilliant sun. The woman at the summit.
He opened his eyes again—and the scene overlapped.
For a brief moment, he could almost see them as they were. The villagers alive, their voices chanting in an ancient tongue. The sun burning white overhead. The woman turning slowly toward him—eyes hollow, mouth filled with teeth that weren't human.
Gray stumbled backward, his breathing uneven. The world blurred between what was and what is.
The bones around him seemed to whisper.
He ran.
Through vines, through fog, through fragments of fallen stone. His mind screamed denial even as his heart pounded in recognition. The ground rose beneath him—another slope, another broken staircase swallowed by roots.
When he reached the top, his legs nearly gave out.
Before him stood what remained of a shrine. Small, crooked, carved of dark stone, its surface eaten away by time. It sat atop the hill like a tomb rather than a monument. Gray approached slowly, every instinct screaming that this place should not exist.
He brushed away the debris inside. Only ash. Charred fragments of offerings. Burnt wood. Nothing alive, nothing divine.
He crouched there for a long moment, unable to look away.
"This is it," he whispered. "The same mountain. The same place."
He didn't realize he was shaking until his vision steadied.
All around him, the jungle sighed. The leaves rustled as if exhaling a century's worth of silence.
Then—distantly—a voice.
"Gray!"
He turned sharply.
Aurelle's voice cut through the quiet like a blade. "Gray! Where are you?"
He hesitated only a heartbeat before pushing through the ferns and running down the slope. The forest closed in around him, the sunlight fading behind thick branches.
When he broke through into a clearing, the others were already there. Aurelle stood near the edge of the river, his expression blank. Adel sat on a nearby rock, cleaning her blade which was covered in blood with a leaf.
"Finally," Adel said sharply, stepping forward. "Thought you got lost for a moment."
Gray caught his breath. "I was," he said. "For a bit."
"A bit?" Her tone softened slightly, but her eyes didn't. "You were gone long enough for Aurelle to start—"
"I wasn't panicking." Aurelle stood calmy looking at the surroundings.
Gray didn't respond. His gaze was distant, fixed on something behind them. The forest stretched endlessly in every direction, sunlight glinting off damp leaves. It looked peaceful—too peaceful.
Finally, he said quietly, "This place isn't what we think it is. It isn't a regular jungle."
Aurelle glanced at him and frowned. "Meaning?"
"It's the mountain," he said. "The one from my vision."
The words hung in the air, heavy as the humidity around them.
Adel blinked. "You mean that dream you mentioned?"
Gray shook his head. "Not a dream. A memory, maybe. Or something else. But this—" he gestured toward the jungle, "—it's the same place. I saw it before. The shape, the skeletons, the geography. Everything matches, just… older. Buried."
Aurelle straightened his body as he stared at Gray. "You're saying this whole jungle was once a mountain? "
Gray nodded. "A village built on one. The people who lived here—they're all around us now. The skeletons."
He met Aurelle's gaze. "But they remained stuck in position for who knows how long..."
Aurelle folded his arms, trying to ground the conversation. "Even if you're right, it doesn't help us. This place is crawling with monsters, and we've found nothing that explains the territory's layout. We need to head back."
Gray's eyes lifted toward the ceiling of the cavern—toward the jagged opening where sunlight spilled through. The cracked sun hung high above, fractured but burning still.
"The jungle hides it," he said softly. "But you can't bury truth forever. This place—it's just one big grave pretending to be alive."
The words silenced them. Even Aurelle said nothing for a while. The only sound was the river murmuring nearby, calm as breath.
Finally, he exhaled. "Fine, let's move. We shouldn't sit still in one place."
Aurell gave a faint nod. He lead the group backwards, their steps slow and cautious.
At the edge of the clearing, Gray stopped once more and turned back.
The sunlight caught the shrine atop the hill, hidden away, turning it gold for a fleeting second. For that moment, it looked sacred again—like something holy peering through decay.
He whispered under his breath."What could even kill all of them at once..."
Then he turned and followed the others into the shadows.
The jungle remained still. The wind stirred the vines around the shrine, and for a heartbeat, it almost sounded like distant chanting—faint, rhythmic, and full of sorrow.
High above, through the cracked ceiling, the fractured sun flickered once more before vanishing behind a drift of cloud.
And silence returned to the grave.