Draemir looked around the ballroom, assessing his situation. For the first time since he’d entered the trial, he felt a glimmer of hope.

‘I can survive here,’ he thought. ‘At least for a few days.’

He was starving, yes, but with the fountain of fresh water in the center of the room, he wouldn’t die of thirst. He knew that thirst was a quicker killer than hunger, and the water here would buy him time—time to rest, time to plan, maybe even time to find a way out of this.

He glanced back toward the entrance he’d come through, feeling a prickle of unease. The storm still raged outside, a relentless torrent that would be all too easy for something—or someone—to hide within. After a moment’s hesitation, he walked back to the doors and, with some effort, pulled them closed. They shut with a satisfying thud, sealing him inside the ballroom. Now, at least, he wouldn’t have to worry about anything sneaking in behind him while he explored.

With the door closed, the temperature in the room seemed to rise, the chill of the storm outside slowly fading away. For the first time in hours, he wasn’t shivering. He pulled off his soaked boots, grimacing at the squelching sound they made, and set them aside. His bare feet on the cold stone were a relief after the endless rubbing and chafing, and it made him quieter as he moved. He didn’t want to alert anything—or anyone—in the temple to his presence if he could help it.

He took a deep breath and glanced down the hallway branching off to the side of the ballroom. Might as well see what’s in here, he thought, curiosity nudging him forward.

Padding softly down the corridor, he came to another door, which he pushed open, revealing a smaller, less ornate room. This one was different—more utilitarian, with none of the regal decor of the main hall. There were no banners, no throne, no carpets. Instead, the walls were lined with shelves, and tables were scattered haphazardly around the room. He hesitated in the doorway, taking in the details, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.

It almost looked like… a workshop.

The room was relatively empty, but there was a certain practicality to its layout, a sense of purpose that reminded him of the places he’d sometimes seen through windows in the city—workshops where people repaired things, where old machines were taken apart and repurposed. The tables bore no tools or scraps of metal, but the faint outline of dust suggested they had once been used for something.

The shelves lining the walls were bare, except for a thin coating of grime. They looked as if they’d once held supplies, items that had been removed or maybe looted long ago. Whatever this place had been, it hadn’t been used in a very, very long time.

He stepped further into the room, his bare feet silent on the stone floor, and his gaze landed on one of the walls. Strange marks were etched into the stone, faint but visible, similar to the symbols he’d seen above the temple doors. These, however, were rougher, as if carved in haste or without the same level of craftsmanship. The marks were jagged, their edges chipped, some lines faded almost to invisibility. He couldn’t read them—he couldn’t even guess at their meaning—but there was an intensity to them, a sense that they had been put there for a purpose.

What were these for? Draemir wondered, running his fingers lightly over the carved symbols. They felt rough under his skin, cold and unyielding. Were they some kind of instructions? Or warnings? He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was looking at the remnants of someone’s work, left here in a hurry, abandoned when the temple was deserted.

As he looked around the room, he found himself wondering about the people who had once inhabited this place. Whoever they were, they had clearly spent time here, working in this space, creating… something. But for what purpose? And why had they left?

Draemir’s eyes drifted back to the tables, the empty shelves, the dust that covered everything. This room felt different from the rest of the temple—less like a place of worship, and more like a place of creation. It made him wonder if this temple had once been more than just a place to honor a god. Maybe it had served a practical purpose as well, a place where knowledge or technology had been crafted.

Draemir spent the next hour wandering the quiet, empty halls of the temple, peeking into rooms one by one. Most of them were abandoned chambers with nothing but dust and shadows to greet him, stripped bare of anything that might have been useful or even interesting. Old storerooms, small chambers with no furnishings, long corridors that led to dead ends—whatever life had once thrived here was now nothing but a memory, a layer of grime on stone.

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Just when he was about to give up hope of finding anything worthwhile, he stumbled upon a hidden chamber tucked behind the throne in the ballroom. It was small and plain, concealed by an almost invisible door in the stonework. The room itself wasn’t remarkable—no strange symbols, no grand statues, just a space barely big enough to fit the single object it contained.

A bed.

It was simple, but sturdy-looking, its wooden frame still intact despite the years. The mattress was covered in a fine layer of dust, but it was dry and firm, an enormous step up from the cold, hard stone floors he’d been sleeping on. Draemir hesitated, glancing around the room, feeling an odd sense of trespass. This had once been someone’s private chamber, someone important enough to have their own hidden bedroom within the temple.

But he quickly brushed off the hesitation. If they aren’t going to use it, I certainly will, he thought, a small smile creeping onto his face. Whoever had once claimed this bed hadn’t touched it in… well, probably centuries, judging by the dust. And he wasn’t about to let a perfectly good bed go to waste. He had a more comfortable place to rest now, and that small victory felt like a lifeline.

Still, he couldn’t shake the unease that had been growing in him since he entered this place. As he explored the other side of the temple, he came across another room—a dining hall, opulent and grand in its design. It was smaller than he would have expected, but every inch of it radiated wealth and splendor. A long, polished table stretched down the center, lined with empty chairs, and more of those dark purple banners hung from the walls. But the food he’d been hoping for was nowhere to be found. No traces of anything edible, not even a crumb.

He sighed, a pang of disappointment gnawing at him. A dining hall with no food was just another reminder of how alone he was here, how every comfort this place offered seemed to come with a shadow of something missing, something wrong. This temple was opulent, yes, but its beauty was hollow, like a painting that had been drained of its colors.

And then he found the cellar.

At first, he’d thought it was just a storage area beneath the temple, a place where supplies had once been kept. But as he descended the narrow, winding staircase that led down from the main floor, he realized that this was something entirely different.

The basement was darker than the rest of the temple, the air colder, and the silence deeper. The stone walls were the same as they were everywhere else—smooth, unblemished, pristine—but there was an eerie stillness here that made the hairs on his arms stand up. At the far end of the basement, nestled in the darkness, was a single cell.

Draemir’s steps slowed as he approached it, his heart pounding. The cell was small, barely large enough for a person to stand or lie down. Its walls were bare, unadorned, save for a single metal chain rooted to the center of the floor. At the end of the chain were broken shackles, simple metal manacles meant to hold someone—or something—in place.

The cell door lay broken off its hinges, the metal bent and twisted, as if something immensely powerful had forced its way out. Draemir stared at the warped iron, his mind racing. The door’s bars were thick, reinforced, designed to hold against force, yet they were mangled, snapped in places where the iron had been forced apart.

A chill settled over him, and he took an involuntary step back.

‘What could have even bent metal that thick?’

His imagination filled in the blanks, conjuring images of creatures with impossible strength, beings whose very existence defied natural order. The fact that this place had once been a prison—an isolated cell hidden in the bowels of the temple—disturbed him on a level he couldn’t quite put into words. The temple had felt strange and empty, but this cell made it feel sinister, as if a darker history lay buried beneath the dust and stone.

He shivered, glancing around the basement as if expecting to see some shadowy figure lurking in the corners. But he was alone. Still, the thought lingered: something dangerous had once been held here. And whatever it was, it had broken free.

Draemir quickly backed away from the cell, his heart pounding faster. There was no sign of the creature, no clues as to what had happened after it escaped, but the damage to the cell door was proof enough of its power. It was unsettling, a reminder that he was in a place that had once held beings beyond his understanding, forces that had been locked away for reasons he couldn’t even begin to guess.

He forced himself to turn and walk back up the stairs, trying to shake off the anxiety that clung to him. He had no idea how long this temple had been abandoned, but judging by the dust and the decay, it was likely that whatever had once been imprisoned here was long gone.

‘At least, I hope it is.’ he thought, his stomach churning.

Back on the main floor, he took a deep breath, trying to regain his composure. He had water, a safe place to sleep, and, for now, the walls of the temple seemed to offer some degree of protection from the storm outside. But the memory of that broken cell lingered in his mind, a constant, nagging reminder that this place wasn’t as safe as it seemed.

He made his way back to the ballroom, glancing around one last time to make sure he was alone. His new bed in the hidden chamber waited for him, and he was ready to rest.

Closing his eyes, he drifted to sleep rather quickly.