Ethan went hugging Dovos when he saw the secret passage, which he had been searching for, open behind the big statue of Mordu'.

"You big bastard! You did it."

While the two were jolly with their new finding, Igüan, who had been sleeping the whole time, stared at them confused.

"Oh! Igüan! Close your mouth or a fly will lay eggs in it." Dovos made fun of him.

"What is that? What's happening?" Igüan mumbled.

Although Dovos and Ethan did not notice, Igüan noticed the floor was trembling since earlier. He put his ear to the floor and listened to it.

"Footsteps! Footsteps!!" Igüan yelled urgently. "Get down! Get down to the floor! Hurry!"

Immediately after Igüan's warning, they heard the familiar low growl from the distance. A snowball flew in through a window. It hit the fireplace, spreading the burning coals across the wooden floor. Soon followed the second, third and fourth ones, crushing to the wall of the temple.

"Whitegrowls!" shouted Ethan, "I see two on the left."

"Three on the right." Dovos counted through the window. A whitegrowl saw his head and took a shot at the target. It went straight through the window toward Dovos' head. And Dovos did not notice it as he was talking to Ethan giving his back to the window. Dovos felt his back hair standing up as his instinct tried to warn him. However, it was too late to dodge.

"Fu*k me," Dovos muttered.

A loud thud echoed across the hall. Ethan reopened his eyes which were tightly shut earlier as he was not ready to see another tragedy. He saw Dovos panting in fear while Igüan blocked the incoming missile with his shield at the last minute.

"Get away from the window. Toward the secret tunnel!" Ethan directed them.

They rushed to the narrow tunnel behind the statue, while icy missiles came running to them. The floor was burning. Pieces of wood shattered spewing all over the place. Columns broke and the roof sank in without the support. The beautiful wooden temple was destroyed by the bombardment of monsters.

"Gosh, this passage is completely blocked. We can't get out from here anymore," complained Dovos.

"We can't go out there even if it is open anyway. Let's move inside. Igüan, do you know where this leads to?"

Igüan shook his head. This was the first time he noticed there is a tunnel below the temple.

They sensed that they were going downward. They kept on walking until they found the exit. It wasn't a natural tunnel but there wasn't any mine nearby to be man-made either. "This must be used by the temple for some secretive businesses," Ethan noted.

After three candle time, they saw some lights ahead of the tunnel. It put a smile on their faces.

"Finally!" Dovos shouted joyfully. As if his whole life had been imprisoned in this suffocating tunnel, he ran out pushing Igüan to the side. He did not even care what could be waiting ahead.

When they reached the end, the scene mesmerized them. It was a giant room in the middle of the mountain. One side was a wall of rocks while the other side was open ground. From there, they could see the end of the tundra field and the start of the greeny grass plain of Rode dukedom.

"Hey! I can hear the sound of flowing water. Do you hear it too?" Dovos asked. He had been hearing it since they were in the tunnel. He did not say it because he did not want to alarm the others.

"Must be the water in this lake," said Igüan pointing at the pond in the middle of the room. The snow dropped into the room and was gathered at the middle lowest ground when melted and formed a natural pond. With the rocky foundation, the water was as clear as crystal. Dovos shook his head saying the sound could not be from a resting pond. "It is the sound of a river."

Dovos got his answer when Ethan stood at the edge. "You must be saying this. There is literally a river flowing right out of the mountain at our left side." He called them to check it out. "This must be the start of Irra River."

"I will be damned." Dovos' jaw dropped when he found a big waterfall, just thirty steps to their left.

"It is so beautiful," Igüan concurred with him.

"You haven't seen this yet?" Ethan asked Igüan in surprise. As a local, Igüan should have seen it at least once. Igüan explained why. "I have, only from the ground though. No one in the village knows there is a room in the middle of the mountain. In fact, most of us know very little of this mountain even though we know almost every nick and nock of the other mountains. Since before my grandma's time, this mountain became a prohibited area. No children were allowed to play on this mountain. We called this mountain the 'Lair of the undead, the evil's den'. No aurora can be seen from here," said Igüan.

Igüan shared his knowledge about the mountain. It was just a lore but Ethan did find the mountain suspicious. On the beautiful wall of the rocky mountain, there were undecipherable inscriptions and strange drawings.

"Who drew these?" Dovos took a guess leisurely while taking a rest on a rock bed which happened to be near the wall. "Must be a child from your village. I mean which adult would draw a mountain goat with a snake as the tail? Or a monkey with a horn."

"No. It can't be. As I said, no children from our village come here." Igüan continued, "This drawing reminds me of a story my grandma told. She told me that, once, her father had hunted a rabbit with antlers. Also, his friend claimed that he found his wife walking in the distance who had died by falling off the cliff. He said her feet were those of a mountain goat so he ran away."

While Dovos and Igüan focused on drawings, Ethan scratched his head reading the inscriptions. He believed he had seen a similar inscription before. But he did not remember where.

"All of this wasn't that long ago though. It started when a man named 'Sakh El' came a century ago. Back then, King Dane united the midland and welcomed us, snow tribes, to live in warmer lands. The treaty broke the ancient way of not allowing outsiders and some lowlanders came to live with us. Among them was Sakh El, a foreigner. After he settled here in this mountain, all those weird things started. Since then, the elders re-established the no-outsider law." Igüan spilled his village stories. "Of course, that evil sorcerer was exterminated by Sage Mordu' later, hence a temple was built there."

While Igüan was telling the story, a name stroke an interest in Ethan's heart. "Sakh el. Sakh el?" Ethan kept muttering the name until it sparked something from his memory. "Sakh El? ... Sahel?"

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As if he had unravelled a messy ball of wool, the answers to every question came into his mind. He looked around the room carefully with the change in point of view. Alienated inscriptions, weird drawings, a rock bed and the man named 'Sakh El' who might possibly be Sahel, the writer of a strange book with human anatomy and then, Mordu'. "I get it now," Ethan spoke out loud accidentally. When Dovos asked what he found out, he acted a fool. "Hmm? What? I didn't say anything."

After refilling their water, they continued their journey downward. There was another tunnel on the opposite side. They did not know where it might lead them but it was a safer chance than climbing down the slippery rocks.

They followed the tunnel for a very long time. Since there was no sun to tell the day or night, they could not figure out how many hours or maybe days they had been walking inside the tunnel.

"Can you share some water?" Igüan asked after he rattled his water bag for any drop of water. For someone who had been living in snow, he had never been this hot or sweated before; nor he had any idea about rationing water. Dovos checked his bag. It was flat. "I am done too. At most, a sip or two left." They both eyed Ethan's bag. It seemed heavy at the bottom.

"No," answered Ethan. "Not now. Let's walk for a hundred more steps. Then we will rest."

"But, sir. My vision is turning blue."

"Then slap your cheeks and alert yourself. We will keep moving."

Although it was a bit harsh, Ethan did best what he believed for the survival of them all. Without rationing the supply, they would not make it out alive. Dovos understood what Ethan meant so he comforted Igüan and helped him with the weight while Ethan helped Igüan alert by keep talking to him.

"Will I die here?" Igüan muttered. His mind slipped away. "If I die here, ...I know it is too much to ask but can you at least send the reward money my brother got to my family?"

"No," replied Ethan. "You won't die here. You are a warrior. Do not give in to the trick of the body. Be your mind the master of your body. Not the servant."

Ethan told him to be strong. However, Igüan was not strong enough to fight against the heat. "The kid won't make it without the water." Said Dovos. "He isn't like us. Snow and ice were his life. He can't stand against his heat. Let's rest for now and give him some water. Let's not push him too much."

"...okay. Let's rest."

After a gulp of water, Igüan felt life came back to him. Igüan took out a chunk of Chevon from his bag. It was their only meal and they were lucky that Igüan happened to take one from the snow stash. They sliced it as thin as they could and ate it raw. "Are you sure we can eat this raw?" Dovos asked. He had no intention to take any chance in a tunnel. A belly problem would be devastating in a partially closed environment, already stinky by three men's sweat.

"Definitely," replied Igüan confidently, "sometimes we forget a flick then, we eat meat raw. I guess you can use extreme cold to cook the meat."

"I doubt that."

"Well. We have already eaten it raw several times and we are still fine, so. We can't cook here anyway. And Igüan, don't put in too much salt. We can't afford to be thirsty."

"Don't worry. Our salt is special. It is a gift by Aurora." Igüan said proudly as he sprinkled some fines over the slice.

"Heck. I don't know where does your confidence come back from. Just earlier, you were giving your last words to us."

They made fun of Igüan. Embarrassed, Igüan lowered his head while giggling. He himself believed he was ridiculous. He was so serious back then that it became funnier after. "I really thought I was a goner," Igüan confessed with a big silly smile.

The three of them resumed their journey to nowhere after a small break. They had no schedule. No taking account of time. They slept when exhausted. Ate the bare minimum when hungry. Walked when recharged.

And so, later, they saw a glimpse of hope at the end of their journey. They saw a ray of sunlight shining through a hole in the roof. It was not the end of the tunnel but they decided to get out through it. Igüan ran toward it first since he had been desperate to get out of the heat. To his shock, there was another hole in the floor too. He was too focused on the light, he did not see it. He fell down the hole.

Ethan and Dovos, who were laughing at the kid, rushed to his rescue when they saw him fell suddenly. They looked down by the edge and called him out worriedly. Compare to their worry, the response was rather lukewarm as they saw him smiling at them.

"I am fine. It was only three meters fall."

"Don't be too relaxed. It is dark down there. We don't know what kind of monster might be dwelling inside. Check your surrounding first."

Since Igüan was inexperienced with the monsters, Ethan had to warn him. Igüan followed what he was told. He raised his shield and checked the surrounding. He saw nothing since the tunnel was too dark. Although the ray of light reached inside the tunnel, it was only up to his head. The light did not reach the rest as the tunnel slopped horizontally downward.

He was fine, happy and relaxed before he did not know a monster might be down there. After the warning, he got scared real quick. The tunnel was empty and quiet. However, he felt like something ominous was watching him, gnarling at him.

"Ermm... Can yo-you pull me up?"

"No. You are too far. But you can climb up yourself."

Igüan thought for a second. It was doable since he had been climbing the mountain since childhood. But he did not want to give his back to the dark in case there was a monster.

"Then, ho-how about you come down and we find another way together," Igüan suggested.

Both of them chuckled at the kid but they complied. They jumped down the hole to be together with him again. They explored the tunnel with Ethan's luminous. Unlike before the tunnel scattered into many paths which were connected, crossing paths. To their surprise, some other paths led outside too even though they were at down level.

"This is like a maze," Ethan remarked at its wonder. After going around for a while, they finally decided to go out.

There, they found out they were in a giant hole in the middle of a dusty plain.

"What is this place?" Dovos wondered. They could see a range of snowy mountains in the distant north and another range in the west. "Are those mountains we were at before? Did we come down from there?" "Probably." Ethan concurred.

"Anyway," Igüan took a big gulp of water leisurely before he continued. He was sure that they would find a water source now that they were free. "Where are we?"

Ethan answered, "South to the Northedge, mountains in the west, a giant hole in the middle of a dusty plain, and_" He tapped a few times at the ground with his feet, "limestone at the feet. There is only one place in Midland." Ethan deducted the place.

"The start of the era of monsters! The gate of the Devil! The pit of Doom!" Dovos stole the spotlight, "the quarry of Rombit."

"And I am sure now," said Ethan. "That this place isn't the start of everything. But there, that room in the mountain is. And my guess_ Mordu' might not be the hero. But a culprit."