Reincarnated as an Elf Prince

Each step groaned underfoot. The walls were carved, but the symbols were old, pre-language, more like shapes pressed into clay. Even his system didn't bother translating. It just pulsed faintly, as if watching.

Twenty-five steps.

The temperature dropped.

The air thickened.

Lindarion didn't light a torch. He didn't need to. His divine affinity let him see enough, faint silver glows outlining edges, highlighting traces of residual energy.

At the bottom, the stairwell opened into a long chamber.

It wasn't grand. Not ceremonial.

Just a room.

Stone shelves lined both sides. Shattered relics sat in piles, broken staves, rusted weapons, chunks of crystal, and worn armor pieces too warped to identify. In the center was a plinth, waist-high, empty except for a half-melted bowl of obsidian.

Ashwing sniffed once. "This feels like a tomb."

"No bodies."

"Then a prison."

Lindarion walked the perimeter. No murals. No offerings. No carvings to suggest worship.

But the bowl… that was different.

It radiated heat. Faint, but constant.

Not fire affinity. Not solar. Something deeper.

He touched it.

Ashwing hissed. "What are you doing?"

The metal burned against his fingertips—but not in the way heat did. This wasn't a temperature burn. It was like touching memory.

He jerked his hand back.

The system pulsed.

[Untranslated Relic: Void-Engraved Vessel]

Affinity Type: Unknown

Function: ???

Lindarion exhaled.

"That's the most unhelpful message I've ever seen," he muttered.

Ashwing crept up beside it, tail twitching. "Do not take it."

"I'm not."

"You always say that before you do."

Lindarion just stared at it. The bowl didn't move. It didn't glow. But something about it… felt aware.

He stepped away.

"I don't like this place," Ashwing said.

"I don't either."

They walked the rest of the room. Found a few scrap weapons—nothing enchanted. No traps. No tricks.

But one thing did stand out: a stone panel near the back wall, set with a symbol.

It wasn't in the same script as the rest.

The system sparked faintly again.

[Translating…]

[Translation: "Blood Shall Return to the Mouth"]

Ashwing blinked. "…romantic."

Lindarion pressed his palm against it. Nothing happened.

Then he noticed the small, hollow groove below the symbol.

A blood channel.

'This place was sealed on purpose.'

He stepped back.

They returned up the stairs without triggering anything.

He didn't touch the relic again.

Didn't try to break the wall.

Not yet.

Back in the temple's upper floor, Lindarion sat again beneath the broken dome and finally pulled food from his pack. Dry, stale. Didn't matter.

Ashwing lay curled at the threshold, eyes watching the distant city glow.

Lindarion ate without tasting.

Then leaned back against the stone and shut his eyes.

Just for a moment.

The bowl was still down there.

Waiting.

—

The morning bled in slow and gray. No sun cut through the low-hanging clouds, just that heavy, directionless light that made everything look older than it was.

Lindarion exhaled into his scarf. The breath fogged against the fabric.

Ashwing sat half-curled beside the crumbling temple entrance, eyes half-lidded, tail twitching as if sensing something off in the wind.

"You're quiet," Lindarion said.

Ashwing grunted. "This place feels like something died and stayed dead."

"It probably did."

He rose. Shoulders tense. The cold in the stones wasn't normal, not just temperature. It was like the place had forgotten warmth ever existed. His boots left no echo as he moved deeper through the temple, the sound swallowed by age.

The upper level was vast but simple. Stone arches, shattered pews, rotting banners that had long lost their colors. Even the altar at the far end was broken—cut clean through, like someone had slashed it in half.

He paused beside it.

Looked at the deep groove that ran along the floor in front of the dais. A channel.

'A sacrifice line.'

Ashwing sniffed beside him. "Demonic?"

"Maybe." He traced the edge of the stone. "Could've been anything. Cult. Exiles. Even old-world elves with bad ideas."

"You say that like they're rare."

"They're not."

Beyond the altar, a pair of double doors stood half-collapsed, one leaning against the other. Burn marks ran up the wood grain, old and faded but unmistakable. Fire. But not natural.

He stepped past them into a narrower hallway.

It smelled different in here, less like dust, more like… charcoal and iron.

Ashwing didn't speak. Just followed.

As they turned the corner, the hallway opened into another chamber, circular, lower-ceilinged. Dozens of statues lined the walls. Most broken. Some barely figures anymore.

The ones still intact were wrong.

They weren't elves.

Not humans.

Not beastkin.

Tall, spindly things with sloped shoulders and wide jaws, wings folded along their backs like insect shells. The faces were angular. Not monstrous, but not kind either.

He looked at the pedestal in the middle of the room.

It was blank.

Ashwing stopped beside him. "You think they worshipped them?"

"Maybe. Or feared them."

His system pulsed once.

[Structure analysis… incomplete]

[Interference detected. Source: ambient residual field.]

[Warning: this site is marked RED under prior celestial archives.]

[Translation suppression partially lifted.]

Lindarion frowned.

'Red?'

That didn't show often. He'd only seen it once, in Ouroboros's archives, long before the system stopped being helpful.

The message vanished.

He crouched near one of the more intact statues, brushing moss from its feet. Runes. Similar to the ones in the basement chamber. But this time, the system flashed again.

[Translation: "Bound not by chains, but by vow."]

[Entity Type: Sovereign Class - Subjugated Line.]

Lindarion didn't move.

"That's not normal," Ashwing muttered. "Even I know that."

"No."

He stood.

That phrase, it didn't sound like worship anymore.

It sounded like… memory. Like something bound by force.

The question was what.

As he stepped further in, something on the far wall caught his eye, carved deeper than the others. A crest. Half-cracked but still visible.

A spear through a crescent. Flanked by two eyes.

'Not elven. Not human.'

And worse, he'd seen it before.

On the flags in the city below.

"…This isn't an abandoned place," he muttered.

Ashwing's tail curled tighter. "It's part of them."

Lindarion stepped back from the wall, suddenly very aware of how cold the stone felt through his boots.

"They built around this," he said. "Or… maybe they didn't. Maybe this was here first."

Neither spoke.

The wind outside shifted, cold, sharp.

Somewhere in the city below, something let out a low, distant howl. Not a beast. Not a horn.

Something between.

Lindarion turned back toward the hallway.

"Let's not stay past dusk."

Ashwing climbed up to his shoulder again, voice quiet. "I thought you wanted answers."

"I still do."

He looked over his shoulder at the broken statues.

"But I'm not giving them mine."