Rowan stepped into the next chamber with the sort of trepidation one might reserve for a surprise party in a tiger's den. Did tiger’s have dens? Or was it lions? He’d have to ask one of the kin of the forest next time he saw one.

The room was so vast and tall, he half-expected a family of giants to come waltzing through a hidden door, asking why he hadn't knocked. It was a room that seemed to be waiting for something colossal, or perhaps a whole herd of colossal somethings. And yet, there were no doors to be seen. What in Eden was this place for?

Turning to his trusty golem companion,Rowan said with a dramatic flourish, "Would you be a dear and flutter about to check for any nasties that might turn me into a kebab?

Arcadia whistled a jaunty metal tune that made her sound like a musical boiling tea kettle, and set off on her reconnaissance mission. She zipped around the room, her mechanical wings flapping with the precision of a metronome gone rogue. It was a sight to behold, and Rowan couldn't help but feel a smidge of pride. After all, not every ruin-delver had a golem, especially not one cobbled together from ancient bits and bobs he found from remnants of the Calamity.

She returned, landing on his shoulder. Inside her avian form, gears whirred and cogs clicked as she relayed her findings to her main body, which doubled as their home-on-wheels and Fog-navigating chariot. Rowan stood as still as a mountain in a windstorm, knowing full well that impatience in these situations often led to scavengers becoming part of the décor. So he waited quietly for Arcadia's verdict.

The silence stretched on until Arcadia, having finished her data download from her main body, announced, "The room's design is so advanced, it makes the rest of the ruins look like they were cobbled together by goblins with a hangover."

Rowan raised an eyebrow. "How so?"

Arcadia's head bobbed as if she were trying to dislodge a particularly stubborn thought. "I can't quite put my wing on it. TThe symbols representing 'space' and 'anomaly' are immediately evocative. Notably, the structure lacks any discernible joints or fissures, yet it features a central recess designed to accommodate a conventional data interface, consistent with those observed in the other archaeological sites we have explored.”

"So there’s a data port. That’s save me time pulling things apart. No traps?" Rowan asked, his voice tinged with hope.

Arcadia shook her head, a motion that made her look like she was trying to win a disagreement with herself. "Doesn't seem to be the case."

Rowan exhaled a sigh of relief that could've inflated a hot air balloon. Arcadia's track record for trap detection was as spotless. So when she said there were no traps, it reassured him. Yet, the absence of traps itself was odd. Usually the final rooms had some sort of trap or puzzle, a test of his intelligence or wit.

Without prompting, Arcadia added, "This is an odd one, Rowan." Her voice carried a hint of concern that made Rowan's own worry-o-meter tick up a notch. He didn’t have a worry-o-meter, but maybe he should make one. There were enough parts back at the caravan. Maybe if he put together the accentuator and focused it on the spirit-emitter, of course at a logarithmic ratio rather than linear, then he could–

“Rowan,” Arcadia prodded gently, snapping him out of his thoughts and bringing him back to the presence.

"What about this room screams 'cutting-edge' to you?" Rowan asked, half-expecting the room to answer him instead.

Arcadia cocked her head with the air of a professor who's just been asked to explain why cats insist on sitting in boxes that are clearly too small for them. After a dramatic pause that would have done any stage actor proud, she declared, "Again, I don't know."

Rowan felt a shiver shimmy down his spine. Arcadia, the bird who'd squawked at him more times than he could count for not feeding her a steady diet of gadgets and trivia, was never at a loss for words. She may have constantly complained that her library of knowledge wasn’t nearly as large as other golems’, but she was never stumped. She didn’t even have a guess toward the right direction. It was enough to make Rowan wonder if the world had turned upside down. Was this even a room of the ancient humans? Or was this something else?

He realized the material he was standing on looked like rock, but he couldn’t quite be certain that it was.

"And what of the little dent in the wall?" he asked..

Arcadia scrutinized the dent. "Upon meticulous examination, the object in question appears diminutive, perhaps deliberately so as to evade detection. However, it possesses an interface port that seems amenable to a cybernetic intrusion, which I am prepared to attempt," she announced, letting her words hang, waiting for Rowan to decide if he was brave enough to stick around or if he'd rather run for the hills.

The earth around them decided to join in the fun with a rumble that could have been mistaken for a giant's stomach growl. Yet, the room they were in remained as still. It was an odd phenomenon. He could sense that the mountain around them threatened to collapse around them, and yet the room itself did not move. It was as if the room had decided it was far too dignified to participate in such shenanigans with the rest of the mountain.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Throwing caution to the wind, Rowan stepped boldly into the room. Instantly, he felt a peculiar sensation, as if he'd walked through an invisible cobweb or a sky-kin’s cloud. It wasn't exactly unpleasant, but it was the sort of feeling that made you check to see if you'd grown a second head.

The room, previously lit only by the glow of the glyphs in the hallway, suddenly came alive with light as Rowan's boots met the floor, which was as black and reflective and unlike any material he’d encounter before. The light didn't just stick to the floor, it had ambitions. It climbed the walls, reaching up to the dome-like ceiling, revealing more glyphs tha shimmered like fireflies on a midsummer's eve in Thermopolis.

These glyphs were the same blue color as the hall leading here, but they were as unfamiliar to Rowan. They were just glyphs that he didn’t know. Their shape and design was entirely different than any shapes he’d encountered.

His eyes grew wide, and his heart did a little jig of excitement—or was it fear? With the thrill of the unknown tickling his senses, it was hard to tell.

Arcadia was doing her best impression of a hummingbird on a caffeine binge, her wings a veritable blur as she clung to Rowan's shoulder. Her tiny talons threatened to turn his leather jacket apart. Despite being a golem, which you'd think would make her immune to such human trifles as nerves, she was quivering like a jelly in a wind tunnel.

The room had suddenly lit up with glyphs, casting a faint blue glow that made Rowan feel as though he'd been unceremoniously stuffed into a glow-worm's lantern. It was all rather disconcerting, yet oddly enough, his instincts were lounging about, sipping tea, and assuring him that everything was as cozy as a bed in a burrow. He had the unmistakable feeling that he was safe.

Rowan's gaze flitted around the room until it landed on a glyph that seemed to be waving at him. It was the same one he recognize in the first door where he placed his blood as an offering. t was the only glyph that had the decency to be somewhat familiar, a distant cousin of the ancients' language that had popped up on the previous wall.

Breaking the silence, Rowan addressed Arcadia, "It’s the same glyph from before. Displaced." At least one of these glyphs were recognizable and he wasn’t completely out of his depth.

Arcadia, ever the conversationalist, whistled her agreement, a sound that could mean anything from 'yes' to 'your hair's on fire.' "The presence of these novel glyphs could potentially indicate the existence of a hitherto undiscovered language, necessitating a comprehensive linguistic analysis to ascertain their significance and syntactical function within the broader context of the artifact's origin and purpose," she added.

Rowan nodded, his mind churning slower than a snail wading through treacle. He took a moment to soak in the ambiance of the room, his instincts whispering sweet nothings of reassurance. "What about the port in the center? Do you think you can still hack it?" he asked, hoping Arcadia's talents extended beyond impromptu acupuncture on his shoulder.

With the grace, Arcadia flitted to the center of the room and plopped down with a click that suggested she was either settling in or had just swallowed a pocket watch. She contorted, trying to fit into the room's centerx. Her wings ceased their frenetic flapping, folding neatly at her sides as she closed her eyes, and a gentle buzz emanated from her, the sound of a golem hard at work—or perhaps just a very determined bumblebee.

In a spectacle that would have made the most flamboyant traveling circus of Sylvestres jealous, the glyphs in the room decided to throw a party. They danced from blue to orange, twirled into purple, and then did a jaunty jig in yellow.

Rowan, standing amidst this chromatic chaos, could only gape.

Time seemed to have thrown its hands up in despair and wandered off for a cup of tea, leaving Rowan in a timeless bubble of swirling, bickering glyphs. They moved with the grace, clashing and colliding. And amidst this pandemonium, the word "displace" popped up like a stubborn weed, refusing to be ignored.

The logical part of Rowan’s brain told him this was all new and possibly dangerous. Yet, somewhere deep down, in that place where wisdom and indigestion shared an apartment, he felt an overwhelming sense of safety. He felt as snug as a bug in a rug. His father had always said, "Trust your gut," though he hadn't specified what to do if your gut was clearly delusional.

As abruptly as a snail winning a marathon, the room ceased its vibrant shimmy, and all the glyphs disappeared, leaving behind only "displace" - a word, a phrase, or perhaps a joke left by the ancient humans. It hung in the air, glowing like a neon sign in the middle of nowhere, casting an eerie light over the room that now seemed to think it was a ship at sea, swaying this way and that.

Rowan edged backwards towards the door but didn't quite have the heart to leave Arcadia to fend for herself. Just as he was contemplating the wisdom of this decision, the floor shifted.

It twisted and writhed, revealing three enormous black pillars that rose up slowly.

Rowan's breath hitched in his throat—not from fear, mind you, but from sheer astonishment. He'd braced himself for the usual fare of booby traps and brain teasers, but this? This was something he never could have prepared for in his wildest dreams. Not even the tales of his father or the gossip of seasoned ruin explorers had prepared him for such a spectacle.

Pillars. Of all things.

The pillars then proceeded to melt into the ceiling with the grace of butter on a hot skillet, leaving Rowan to wonder if he'd accidentally stumbled into a magician's conclave instead of an ancient ruin. His mind buzzed with questions, each more pressing than the last. What sort of stone played fast and loose with the laws of physics like this?

He gave Arcadia a moment to finish her mystical buzzing—because, let's face it, everyone needs a moment now and then—before she opened her eyes, now shimmering with the same blue light as the glyphs that decorated the room. "Are you okay?" he asked.

"Yes," she replied, her voice carrying the distant quality of someone who was returning from a very far off place. Clearly, she was neck-deep in unraveling the mysteries of this ruins’ technology.

"Is it safe to walk around?" Rowan asked, his voice laced with the kind of caution one reserves for testing the temperature of a suspiciously hot bath.

Arcadia gave a nod. Normally, she was talkative when hacking the ancient data ports. Whatever she was uploading to her main body, it seemed to take all of her focus.

Unperturbed, Rowan took it upon himself to inspect the pillars, half-expecting them to spring to life and challenge him to a duel or, at the very least, engage in a spirited game of rock-paper-scissors. He clutched his staff-cum-torch like a lifeline, prepared for the worst. Yet, as he made his rounds, he couldn't shake off the feeling that this place was safe.

He touched one of the pillars, and then all three pillars began to twist slowly, and then revealing glass against each of the pillars that he saw made him slack-jawed and freeze completely still.

Inside the glass casings was not new technology or ancient technology or models of an old golem which he could pull apart or blueprints that would change the face of a nation entirely for the next hundred years, or even a small toy that Rowan could pick apart and study for several months at a time and learn and glean new information from it alone.

No, it was not golems, it was not metal, it was not even hints of secret and old magic that the ancients learned how to fuse into their technologies, and that Rowan tended to ignore. Instead, it was something else entirely.

Inside of the black pillars and suspended and impossibly floating in the air like sky-kin without wings, was a child.

In total, three human children.