Chapter 360: The Impossible Victory

Nobody spoke. Most of the symbols covering the chamber walls had gone dark again, but one section was still glowing, the record of the King of the Sky.

Lily stared at the ancient words, then at the carving beneath them.

The dragon’s body covered almost the entire wall, its wings spilling past the edges of the stone and its head wrapped in clouds, while below it stood countless figures with their weapons raised toward the sky.

There were thousands of them, maybe more.

Lily swallowed. "That’s..."

Sera looked at her. "What?"

"Look at the weapons." Lily stepped closer, and the excitement she usually had around ancient relics was gone from her face. "Those aren’t swords or spears. The big ones behind the armies are relic cannons." She pointed higher. "And those look like mana launchers."

"How many?" Sera asked.

"Dozens," Lily said quietly as she moved along the wall. "Maybe hundreds."

Now that she had pointed them out, Kai could see them everywhere, not only in the carving but in the city itself. Enormous weapons were built into the walls, some shaped like cannons and others like towers with giant crystals at their centers, and a few were large enough to be buildings on their own. They sat on rooftops, inside towers, along the outer walls, and even underground.

Kai turned to Gabriel. "How much of this did the Church know about?"

"Very little," Gabriel said. "We knew Aegis had defensive structures, but we never understood the scale."

"They weren’t just defending the city," Lily said.

"No," Gabriel said. "They were preparing for something."

That much had been obvious to Kai since the shelters. Aegis hadn’t simply been large. It had been built like a fortress.

The chambers that followed only proved it further. They passed more sealed food containers, more shelters and medical rooms, and more backup generators, and every time they thought they had reached the end, another layer opened beneath them.

Sera finally stopped walking. "How big was this civilization?"

"We don’t know," Gabriel said.

"Millions?"

"Possibly more."

Sera looked back the way they had come. "Then how did they all disappear?"

Nobody answered.

Kai looked up at the ceiling stretching far above them, and he finally understood what he was looking at.

Aegis wasn’t a city that happened to have powerful weapons. It was a civilization that had spent an enormous amount of time preparing for one specific threat, and that threat was Bahamut.

He remembered the frozen city, and the dragon standing above Mythal with a presence so heavy he could barely breathe beneath it. He remembered the trial, and the words Bahamut had spoken.

Many possessed strength.

Many possessed knowledge.

Many possessed power greater than yours.

They still broke.

Kai looked back at the wall. "These people knew he was coming."

"That’s what all of this means," Lily said.

Kai walked to the defensive wall and placed his hand against the cold stone. "And it wasn’t just a few years of preparation. They prepared everything. Armies, weapons, shelters, relic technology, enough mana and food to survive underground for years."

He looked at the carving of Bahamut. "So why isn’t Aegis still here?"

No one had an answer.

The next chamber was different from the others. A circular platform stood at its center, surrounded by massive crystals, and hundreds of lines ran from it across the floor, up the walls, and into the ceiling before disappearing deeper into the ruins.

Lily’s eyes went wide as she stepped onto the platform. "I think this was the central mana network. The entire city may have been connected to it."

Sera looked around. "You’re saying this thing powered the whole city?"

Lily crouched and touched one of the lines. "Defenses, transportation, communication, weapons. Everything."

Kai looked at the giant crystals. "How much energy?"

"Enough to power a modern city for..." Lily stopped.

Sera raised an eyebrow. "For what?"

Lily slowly stood up. "I don’t know."

Somehow, that answer made it worse.

Past the network chamber, they found another record, and its images were clearer than any they had seen so far. Thousands of soldiers stood outside the city with massive machines behind them, while enormous relic platforms floated above them. Weapons covered the outer walls, mana barriers surrounded the city, and above all of it, a dragon was descending from the sky.

Sera’s expression changed. "That’s him."

"Bahamut," Lily said.

Gabriel studied the carving, then looked at them. "You two have seen this dragon before?"

Sera glanced at Kai, then at Lily. "Not exactly."

Gabriel noticed the hesitation, but she didn’t press.

The carvings continued in sequence. Aegis activated its defenses, and the armies moved into position. The sky turned dark, the massive weapons fired upward, and the dragon descended.

After that, there was nothing. The rest of the record was blank except for a single line of writing glowing faintly across the stone.

Lily stepped closer and translated it slowly. "The King has descended."

For several seconds, nobody moved. There was no final battle carved into the wall, no victory or defeat, and no explanation at all.

"That’s it?" Lily said.

"That’s all this record shows," Gabriel said.

Lily ran her scanner across the stone, and nothing new appeared. "Then where’s the rest?"

"Maybe it was destroyed," Sera said. She stepped toward the wall. "Or maybe they won. We don’t know what happened after this."

Gabriel’s voice was quiet. "If they won, why did Aegis disappear?"

Sera’s face fell.

"But the other record said the city endured the descent," Lily said.

"The city endured," Gabriel said, looking at the rows of carved soldiers. "That doesn’t mean the army did."

Kai stood completely still, his eyes on the final line, and his mind went back to Mythal and the two System notifications that had appeared almost one after the other.

[Third Disaster Appeared.]

[Third Disaster Passed.]

Nobody in Mythal but Kai had seen what happened in between. The city hadn’t fought Bahamut, and most people never even knew he had come.

Aegis, on the other hand, had known exactly what was coming, and it had done everything it could to prepare, and this was all that was left.

Sera turned to him. "Kai. They prepared for him."

"I know."

Her voice dropped. "Then how strong was he?"

Kai didn’t answer, because he already knew.

He remembered the pressure in the air beneath Bahamut and the weight of the dragon’s eyes, and he remembered that Bahamut had never once attacked Mythal.

He hadn’t needed to.

The Third Disaster had been a personal trial for Kai, nothing more than a conversation, and even that had nearly broken him.

For the first time since they arrived, the ruins didn’t look abandoned to him. They looked like the remains of something that had tried very hard to survive and failed anyway.

Lily walked slowly along the wall. "They had everything," she whispered. "Why would the record just stop?"

"Maybe the people writing it died," Sera said.

Lily shook her head. "Someone had to survive long enough to write it."

"Not necessarily," Gabriel said, and everyone turned to her. She pointed at the final words. "They may have carved this before the battle. If this was their final record, they may have known there wouldn’t be another one."

Lily took a step back. "You mean..."

"They knew they were about to lose," Gabriel said.

Sera looked at the carved weapons again, at thousands of years of preparation and an entire army, and there was nothing after it.

Kai kept his eyes on the final line. "Or maybe they didn’t have time."

Everyone looked at him. Sera’s expression tightened, Lily stopped moving, and Gabriel stared at him for several seconds before she slowly turned back to the record.

Nobody said anything, because that possibility was worse than all the others. It wasn’t that Aegis had fought Bahamut and lost, or that its weapons had failed and its defenses had fallen. It was that the moment Bahamut arrived, the battle might have already been over.

A deep sound rose from beneath their feet.

THOOM.

Everyone froze as a second one followed, shaking dust from the ceiling.

"Did you hear that?" Lily asked.

Kai’s hand went to his weapon, and Sera moved closer to him while Gabriel raised her hand. "Everyone, stay alert."

THOOM.

Something enormous was moving beneath the ruins. The lines in the floor began to glow one after another, and Lily’s face went pale.

"That’s impossible," she said.

Sera glanced at her. "What?"

Lily pointed at the floor as the glow spread across the chamber. "The central mana network. It just activated."

Far below them, something was waking, and somewhere inside the dead city of Aegis, something was still alive.