The Forgotten Path

The mist was no longer gray.

It had deepened into something almost black—swallowing sound, swallowing distance.

Gaius pressed forward, shotgun steady in his hands.

Each step felt heavier now, the ground soft and untrustworthy beneath his boots.

The forest no longer creaked.

It breathed.

Through the swirling dark, he found it.

A trail.

Not carved by modern hands or mapped by corporate surveys.

An ancient, half-erased road of crumbled stones and sunken markers, winding deeper into Grief Hollow’s heart.

Overgrown. Twisted. Forgotten.

But it was there.

At the base of a broken arch, almost lost in the choking vines, he saw them:

Symbols. Old ones.

Faint Codex glyphs. Early scouting marks, half-digested by moss and resonance rot.

Someone had tried to map this place.

Someone had failed.

A sound drifted through the mist.

Not footsteps.

Not machines.

Voices. Faint, broken—like echoes from old tapes played back at the wrong speed.

Gaius froze, breath held tight.

Shapes stirred at the edge of vision—shadow forms shuffling along the ancient path, faces half-formed, bodies glitching like broken holograms.

He didn’t move.

He didn’t speak.

He watched.

The phantoms passed without seeing him, vanishing into the deeper dark.

The Hollow was not dead.

It was dreaming.

And Gaius Perenos understood then:

This was no place for lone men.

This was no relic to be stolen and sold.

He turned away from the path.

Marked the broken arch in his mind.

He would return—with preparation, with firepower, with numbers.

If survival allowed.

The trek back would not be easy.

The forest was not merciful.

He adjusted the shotgun in his grip, felt the weight of every step ahead.

The way back to the crawler was long.

The journey to Nexus Prime, longer still.

But he had seen enough.

The Hollow Seed awaited.

And Grief Hollow was already awake.