While Zoe didn’t waste any time in hurrying down the colorfully-lit hallway, she couldn’t help but marvel at the architecture. She had to force herself to not slow down and study the torches and abstract carvings in closer detail.

Still, she paid as much attention to the space itself as to her pursuit of the paladin. She was kind of starting to regret not paying attention to the large mosaic—mural?—that had overlooked the fountain in the chamber where they had first arrived.

From what she could remember—or really, what she could remember of her impression of it—it was less abstract and far more detailed than the decorations here in the hidden corridor. In any case, the carvings along the walls were simple and sparse—but they seemed fairly deliberate as well.

While there were regular, recurring patterns and motifs, there was no highest-level of repetition that Zoe could discern. It was sort of like looking at one of those famous mathematical fractals. While there was a clear theme, even if it was an abstract one, every piece of it was still somehow new as well.

Sadly, aside from the gem-like torches, it wasn’t very colorful. Most of it was just worked into the raw stone, a mixture of embossed and engraved features. Occasionally, there were tiles of stone of a slightly different shade, and even a few more varied gemstones.

Zoe spent the next five-or-so minutes like this. There were fairly regularly spaced archways to either side of the passage, though like the artwork, there was seemingly no completely regular pattern to them. Peering into them, Zoe saw that they either led up, down, or in rarer cases, straight for a while.

I wonder what this is? Aside from just the question of what the entire structure was—including the cavern and the broader, columned passageways above—Zoe wondered what the point of this particular area was. While there wasn’t much else to go on and the whole place seemed completely deserted, something about it gave her the vague feeling of hidden utility tunnels. Sort of like how people back on Earth moved staff around at theme parks.

Of course, the beauty and care that obviously went into its construction conflicted somewhat with this hypothesis.

After a little while longer, Zoe stopped looking at the pretty, but subtly unsettling five-pointed geometry of the wall reliefs and paid more attention to the torches. Like literally everything else, there was no true pattern to the arrangement of their different colors, although so far they were completely regularly spaced.

Each torch had a base—grip? Made of either a dull silvery or bronze-like metal. Poking one, Zoe thought that it felt pretty solid. The flames were more interesting, of course. They levitated a centimeter or two above the metal stick with a visible gap between. They were roughly spherical at the bottom, tapering up into slowly licking flames. In fact, the flames undulated so slowly that it gave the impression of them being underwater or recorded in slow-motion.

Zoe never saw any of them completely change hues, but they did continuously shift their colors just slightly. After a few seconds of painful deliberation, Zoe finally caved and stuck one of her claws into one.

It didn’t hurt. It didn’t even burn. It just felt like a faint, temperature-less flow. Huh. It didn’t seem like a pure illusion, but it didn’t feel completely there either. As she continued along, Zoe used {Morph} to peel back the same claw into a pale, fleshy exposed finger. The next one felt even weirder—almost like being tickled by a thin velvet cloth. Weird.

Letting her claw return back to normal, Zoe increased her pace. Her mana was now over half full, and the damage to her body was almost completely healed. She was still sore, but not quite so broken.

I wonder what’s powering the lights?

If Zoe could, she would have frowned. The whole place seemed ancient and long-deserted. Except for the kraken, of course. So how were all these magical constructs still operating? While it didn’t quite make sense, Zoe wasn’t going to jump to the conclusion that the place was being maintained. For all she knew, they were just really efficient and some magic could last for quite a while.

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Finally, Zoe thought to try focusing on them with {Predator’s Eyes}. The ability took full force in an instant, revealing—absolutely nothing. Zoe blinked. To her ability, it was like the torches weren’t even there at all. Canceling it and trying again achieved the exact same result. In fact, nothing around her gave any indication of any variations in mana at all. Ever since her first day in this world, Zoe had been used to there being slight but perceptible variations in the quality and amount of mana suffusing even the most mundane objects and spaces.

Here, it was just a thin, uniform continuum. Narrowing her eyes, Zoe came to a complete stop for the first time. Appraising the closest torch, she tried to detect something, anything. There was nothing. Cocking back a fist, she punched it with all her strength.

Much to her surprise, the torch ripped clean off the wall, clattering to the floor and rolling a bit farther before slowing to a stop. While it felt like it was attached well enough, it wasn’t much of a challenge for Zoe’s current strength.

Walking up to the detached torch, Zoe picked it up. The flame was still ‘burning’ just like before, but the metal body was a bit scuffed up now. Despite the lack of detectable magic, it felt real enough in her hand. If this is some kind of illusion, it’s a damn powerful one.

Zoe dropped the torch and moved on. Now, however, she was less focused on her surroundings and deeper in thought. Definitely a weird place. Lost temple vibes for sure. Maybe I’ll anger some primordial god and have to escape through a bunch of crazy traps with a legendary artifact.

Zoe snorted. Okay, but like actually. I’m not even joking, that wouldn’t even be that surprising at this point. Then she squinted. Well, I probably shouldn’t jinx myself like that…

In any case, she was going to be really annoyed if the paladin had gone off into one of the now innumerable side-passages. There was no way Zoe would be able to find her in any reasonable amount of time if that were the case. Well, that’s assuming it doesn’t all converge in some important location.

Shrugging, she picked up the pace and continued on. It wasn’t long though before she thought to experiment with one of her other newer magic skills—{Arcane Manipulation}. Suddenly remembering the obscuring fog and the invisible magic barrier just not too long ago, she felt pretty silly. It wouldn’t surprise her if something very similar to that were going on here.

Stopping again, Zoe scrutinized the thin, featureless mana all around her. It wasn’t completely colorless—it was like there was a very faint, pale lavender filter over the world. Zoe channeled {Arcane Manipulation} and shoved outward against it just like she had with the fog.

The world fractured.

Nearly blinded by an intense violet flash of light, Zoe reeled as the weight of a mountain slammed back against her equally from every direction. Her own magic was completely powerless against it. It didn’t even feel like a struggle so much as happening to be in the way of something that wouldn’t even notice it hit you.

In that brief moment, cracks erupted through Zoe’s mind. All around her, magic and spirit alike sheered apart. Not having the time to consider the consequences and just having barely recovered from the initial shock, Zoe tried to peer into them and beyond.

A brilliant gold flared before her eyes, all but blinding Zoe to the chaos just beyond. It wasn’t so much blindingly bright as it was complete. The wall of gleaming mana completely enveloped Zoe, seemingly emanating entirely from within her own spirit.

But it wasn’t hers to control.

The gold pushed back—and unlike Zoe’s attempt, it worked. The shimmering cocoon rapidly expanded around her, pushing back the fractures of violet. Though she couldn’t see, Zoe realized she could just barely hear.

For an instant, there was a faint burst of static. It was almost enough for Zoe to think she might be able to discern fragments of garbled voices—music?—but then it was gone too, and Zoe opened her eyes.

A splotchy afterimage of hazy purple burned across her mundane vision. Blinking it away, Zoe looked around in awe as the last flecks of golden streamers broke apart and faded away into nothingness all around her. It looks just like the magic the paladins both used.

Zoe looked inward. Along with the demonic red and corrupted black, she did still possess her own thin threads of gold. Like Lily. And Andric. And every single other person—

Except the unawakened. Zoe thought back to her brief time in the town right outside the underworld and its inhabitants. They lacked the gold, and she had concluded at the time that it was connected to the System. Grand Design, or whatever.

Shivering slightly, Zoe looked around. There was no more violent, no more gold. Just polished stone and flickering, multicolored torches. I think whatever just happened was DEFINITELY important.

Now, she just had to find out why.