Reincarnated as an Elf Prince

It wasn't a corridor in the normal sense.

No torches. No walls.

Only open space on either side, shadow-thick, unending.

Their path was a walkway, raised barely a foot from the nothing beneath. Black stone. Veined with pale gray lines that occasionally pulsed, dim and irregular.

Lindarion walked first.

Lira behind him, blade ready but not drawn.

Luneth to the right, silent. Watching everything.

Sylric behind, steps careful, expression unreadable.

Stitch stayed in the center. Erebus walked rearguard, too quiet.

It felt like walking through a vein. Like they were blood cells passing through a body older than time.

Each step further narrowed Lindarion's thoughts.

He couldn't feel his fire affinity.

Or darkness.

Only void.

It pressed against his ribs with slow, cold pressure. Not painful. Not unwelcome. Just… present.

The walkway curved left.

Then right.

Then stopped.

They reached a platform.

Circular. Twelve feet across. Symbols etched in concentric rings, but not ones they recognized.

No runes.

No glyphs.

Not even magical traces.

Just shapes.

Lindarion stepped onto it.

It reacted.

The outer ring lit once, dim purple-blue, like dying starlight.

Sylric swore under his breath.

"Movement?"

"No mana source," Stitch said, checking his tool. "It's ambient. Low-frequency patterning."

Lira crouched. "These aren't control marks."

"They're instructions," Erebus said, finally speaking.

Lindarion turned.

Erebus was staring at the central symbol.

It wasn't glowing.

It wasn't carved.

It was scorched.

Lindarion crouched beside it.

Three lines.

Interlocking.

One curved inward, one outward, one spiraling tightly into a point that had no center.

His vision blurred again.

Just for a second.

A pulse, direct, cold, familiar.

He felt his mana coil, but not rise.

This wasn't a spell.

It was a keyhole.

And something inside his affinity structure, deep in the part he never used, knew exactly what it was.

Void.

Pure, absolute, ancestral.

He stood.

"This was made before us."

"Before mana," Lira added.

Sylric ran a hand over his beard, eyes flicking between symbols. "You feel it too?"

Lindarion nodded. "Yeah."

"Feel what?" Stitch asked.

"Intent," Luneth said, softly.

They all looked at her.

Her voice was quiet, but certain.

"This place isn't old. It's waiting."

Erebus's eyes narrowed. "For what?"

Lindarion didn't answer.

Because he already knew.

—

They continued.

The second walkway twisted downward, slightly steeper, wrapped in black spires that leaned inward like ribs. The air grew heavier, not with heat, but with silence. Not a single echo.

At one point, they heard breathing.

None of them were breathing that loud.

None of them commented.

The second chamber was smaller.

Octagonal. Featureless.

Except for the center, where a single object hovered.

It wasn't suspended by magic.

Or anchored by stone.

It just hung there.

A shard.

Six inches long.

Transparent.

Fractured like ice held mid-explosion.

No light passed through it.

No reflection.

Only absorption.

Lindarion stopped six feet from it.

His core pulsed once, stronger than before.

Every strand of affinity responded.

Except Divine.

Except Fire.

Only Void stirred.

He stepped closer.

Lira blocked his path with one arm.

"Touch that, and you don't come back the same."

"I'm not sure I want to," he said.

"That's the point."

They stood like that for a beat.

Then Luneth spoke.

"We came to find what this place was made for."

Lindarion lowered his hand.

He stepped back.

Let it breathe.

And the shard pulsed once in response, like a nod.

Not denial.

Just patience.

—

They retreated to the first platform.

The walkway behind them hadn't disappeared.

But it had changed.

The floor patterns had re-aligned.

Like the entire structure was resetting itself between paths.

"Only one door at a time," Sylric muttered. "Of course."

Lindarion exhaled.

They were inside a machine.

That was obvious now.

The rune was never a gate.

It was a selector.

And it had let them in because it wanted to show them the first piece.

Whatever came next would be worse.

Or more honest.

And neither was comforting.

He turned to the others.

"We return," he said.

"Already?" Stitch asked. "We just got here."

"We can't take anything back," he said. "Not without knowing what it costs."

Lira nodded once.

Luneth was already facing the exit.

Erebus didn't speak.

He just watched the shard as they walked away.

And smiled.

—

By the time they climbed back to camp, the sun had shifted halfway down the opposite ridge. Late afternoon. The light was too pale to feel warm, but it helped. The wind hadn't picked up yet.

Ashwing was sleeping above them, coiled on a ledge like some scaled monument, wings tucked neatly over his back.

His tail twitched once when Lindarion passed underneath. A low rumble, not alarm. Just awareness.

The rest of the mercenaries glanced up when the party returned.

No one asked what they'd found.

Smart.

Lindarion walked straight to the map table and unrolled the parchment again. The others gathered behind him, forming a semi-circle in the waning light.

He didn't speak immediately.

Not until Lira stepped beside him.

She placed a folded cloth down. Unwrapped it.

Inside: a charcoal sketch, crude, but precise.

The etched floor pattern from the first chamber.

"I memorized the outer ring," she said. "Didn't want to risk taking anything from inside, so I drew it from recall."

Stitch leaned over her shoulder. "You got all that from one glance?"

"One glance is usually enough," she replied, voice dry.

Sylric raised a brow but didn't argue.

Lindarion studied the sketch.

He didn't recognize the shapes.

But something about the sequence felt familiar.

"The spacing," he said. "It's uneven."

Lira nodded. "Intentionally. They follow a cadence."

"A rhythm?"

"No. A restriction."

She circled one set of marks with her finger. "Here—this loop. It's out of phase with the others. But the way it intersects the surrounding pattern… it's compensating."

"For what?" Luneth asked from the side.

Lira looked at her. "Instability."

Stitch frowned. "Instability in what?"

Lira looked back to the drawing.

"The structure."

Sylric exhaled. "You're saying the rune was made to balance the place it's in?"

"No," Lindarion said. "I think it is the place."

They all went quiet at that.

He tapped the drawing.

"This isn't a chamber."

"It's a node," Lira said, finishing his thought. "One part of a larger grid."

"That shard we found," Lindarion added, "wasn't a relic."

"It was a fuse," Sylric muttered. "Or a lock. Holding the current in place."

Stitch ran a hand through his hair. "And we just walked out with nothing changed?"

"No," Luneth said quietly. "Something changed."

They all looked at her.

She didn't elaborate.

Didn't need to.

Lindarion could feel it too.

His core still throbbed with low resonance, like something he'd brushed against was still following him.

Watching him.