CHAPTER 4: THE RUINS’ SECRET
----------------------------------------
Haruto slumped against the cold stone wall, gasping for breath. His legs burned, his lungs ached, and his hands trembled from the sheer adrenaline dump of narrowly escaping death.
The ruins were silent now, save for the faint echoes of his own ragged breathing.
"I can’t believe that worked."
He had barely made it.
The last thing he saw before slipping through that narrow gap was the guardian’s massive frame slamming into the collapsed passage, unable to follow him. It had glitched, its glowing eyes flickering before its body powered down, frozen in place.
It was still back there, unmoving.
But for how long?
He wiped the sweat from his forehead, his fingers still shaking.
"Alright. Let’s assess."
Good news: He wasn’t dead.
Bad news: He was still trapped in ancient ruins, which was not a win.
Worse news: He had no food, no water, no idea what he was doing, and zero understanding of how to survive in this world.
Best news? …Yeah, no. There was no best news.
He groaned, running a hand through his dust-covered hair.
"At this rate, my cause of death won’t even be monsters. It’ll be 'tripped over a rock and starved in a dungeon like an idiot.' Legendary."
The passage he had stumbled into stretched deeper into the ruins, its walls lined with faintly glowing carvings, whispering of a forgotten past.
"Well, no point in sitting here. Time to find a way out."
----------------------------------------
The ruins stretched ahead like a forgotten tomb—towering stone pillars, long abandoned, loomed over him like silent watchers. The walls were cracked, their surfaces covered in faintly glowing symbols, pulsating like dying embers.
Something about this place felt… wrong.
"It’s like walking through a history lesson no one was supposed to remember."
He stepped carefully, his footsteps echoing through the empty chamber. Every sound—the faint dripping of water, the whisper of dust shifting in the air—felt too loud.
Then he saw it.
A skeleton, slumped against the wall.
Haruto froze.
The air changed.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
It wasn’t just cold—it was stagnant, heavy, like the room itself was holding its breath.
For the first time since entering the ruins, he felt watched.
Something wasn’t right.
He took a hesitant step forward, and as he did, the faint light from the carvings seemed to dim slightly. Not a trick of the eye—an actual shift, like something reacting to his presence.
The skeleton was wearing what remained of old, rusted armor, but unlike everything else in the ruins, it wasn’t covered in centuries of dust.
It looked… too fresh.
Not new, but as if time had tried to erase it and failed.
Then he noticed the fractures.
Its bones weren’t just old and brittle—they were cracked, snapped in unnatural ways, as if whatever killed it hadn’t given it the luxury of a quick death.
A sword lay beside it, untouched by time.
And then, the worst part.
Something was wrong with the skull.
At first glance, it looked normal—hollow sockets, broken jaw.
But as he stared, something in his mind whispered, "Look closer."
He didn't want to.
But his body moved anyway.
And that’s when he saw it—deep, jagged etchings carved into the bone, running along the skull like a brand. The same glowing symbols from the walls, but twisted, distorted.
The moment his eyes landed on them, a sharp pain stabbed through his head.
A flash—a memory that wasn’t his.
Someone screaming. A hand clawing at the ground. The words—"It’s a lie." Blood. Then—nothing.
Haruto stumbled back, gasping.
What the hell was that?
He clenched his fists, shaking off the lingering sensation.
"Nope. Nope nope nope. That was—"
His eyes landed on the message scratched into the stone beside it.
----------------------------------------
"The Hero’s Prophecy is a Lie."
"We were not the first. We will not be the last."
"To the next ‘False Hero’—run while you still can."
Haruto stared.
The air felt too still.
A hollow chill ran through his body.
"Okay. That is absolutely the most cursed thing I’ve ever read."
He swallowed, glancing back at the empty eye sockets of the skeleton.
It was looking directly at him.
No.
It felt like it was waiting for him.
Like it had been left here on purpose.
"I should walk away. Right now."
He didn't.
He glanced at the rusted sword lying beside the remains.
"Well, I don’t have a weapon, and I really doubt Mr. Bones is going to complain if I borrow it."
Carefully, he reached down and wrapped his fingers around the hilt.
Then, everything went very, very wrong.
----------------------------------------
The moment he grabbed the sword, his foot caught on a loose stone.
There was exactly one second where he realized what was about to happen.
"Oh, no."
Then—
He tripped forward.
Directly into the skeleton.
A loud, sickening crunch echoed through the chamber as the entire thing collapsed under him. Bones snapped, shattered, and scattered across the ground in an unholy avalanche of ancient remains.
Haruto hit the floor face-first.
For a moment, he didn’t move.
Then, very slowly, he lifted his head.
The skeleton was now a very convincing pile of bones.
Haruto stared.
"…Oh my god."
"Did I just—"
"Did I just break a person?!?!"
He immediately scrambled backward, horrified.
"Okay. Okay, breathe. It was already dead. You just… accelerated the decomposition process. That’s all."
A beat of silence.
Then he groaned and buried his face in his hands.
"I am the worst adventurer ever."
----------------------------------------
When the skeleton collapsed, it had revealed something behind it.
A door.
Large, stone, marked with the same glowing symbols as the carvings on the walls.
Haruto’s stomach dropped.
"This is either a way out, or I just unlocked a boss battle. Love those odds."
With a deep breath, he pressed his hand against the door.
The symbols flared to life.
Inside…
A massive, abandoned storage room.
And in the center, three things remained.
1. An old, worn cloak draped over a chair.
2. A simple, unadorned ring sitting on a stone pedestal.
3. A book, left open on a nearby table.
Haruto frowned. "The hell is this?"
Flipping through the book, his breath caught.
It was a notebook.
A journal left behind by someone just like him.
A False Hero.
His fingers tightened around the pages.
"What… is this place?"
----------------------------------------
END OF CHAPTER 4
----------------------------------------