When the City Looked Back

With wings spread wide, I descend further into the fortress. The stone closes around me once more, the air tightening like a held breath. The deeper I go, the older the air becomes; stale and bitter beneath my feathers. My eyes flick to every shadow, nerves tightening at each echo, half-expecting the wolf to leap from the dark. But there is nothing… only the stairway spiralling down and down into the depths.

My nerves keep me sharp, and time seems to slow with every breath. Those molten-gold eyes linger in my thoughts. I catch myself wishing for another howl from below — anything to tell me how far ahead the creature truly is.

The carving etched into the central pillar catches my eye; the story continues to coil downward with me; a history shaped by the hands that hewed these steps from the mountain, sealing their memory in stone. The deeper I glide, the more intricate the tale becomes; its art shifting with the ages, each layer revealing another century swallowed by the dark.

As the depths widen around me, I begin to notice parallels in the carvings — not in design, but in meaning. One symbol recurs across the countless ages above, unchanged and unwavering; it cannot be coincidence.

In one era, a great king rides at the head of his host, a banner lifted high above him. Woven into its fabric is a white owl clutching a flaming torch. In the next age, only fragments of colour survive: a battlefield strewn with the fallen, yellow dandelions sprouting between the bodies, their tombs crowned with red poppies — a remembrance of the blood once given. And above them all, carved into the sky, a white owl flies once more, trailing a fierce red flame in its wake.

A cold shiver ripples through my wings. Has our coming been prophesied since the beginning? Or am I seeing meaning in images I don’t understand? What if these carvings were placed here by the Flamepool itself — shaping my thoughts, guiding my steps, making me a slave to its will? Is any of this even real? Or am I still trapped, fooled by simple tricks?

I let out a deep breath, the weight of my thoughts becoming too much to bear.

Caden… where are you?

His face flashes in my mind, and I remember why I am here — why I, a creature of the sky, choose to fly deeper below the ground.

To find him.

To be with him.

Clarity returns as my resolve ripples beneath my feathers like a gathering storm. I fix my focus on the path ahead, refusing to let the story beside me twist my thoughts into doubt or bind me to the fear of prophecy.

Almost as if in answer to my returning strength, a faint tremor runs through the stone below… as though something stirs in the depths. The first thing I sense is the sound of falling water echoing from far beneath. The scent of rain follows a heartbeat later, threading its way upward through the dark.

Without warning, the passage walls fall away. An immense cavern unfurls out of the black; vast enough to dwarf the fortress above. Across the span of its shadowed reach, a colossal waterfall thunders down into a great lake. Somehow, the water carries the memory of daylight, illuminating the lake in a crystal-clear blue and casting its glow outward across the cavern. Even here, in the heart of the gloom, a band of blue light arches through the mist — a rainbow that refuses to fade.

I perch on the stone railing and look over the edge. Far below, a city stretches out beneath me like a memory carved in stone, its streets and towers revealed like a vision drawn from legend. My heartbeat quickens at the sight — such magnificent stonework, carved at the very height of its dynasty, untouched by time and hidden from the world above.

From my perch high above, I see tiered streets spiralling outward from a central plaza, each ring descending toward the lake where the great waterfall meets the earth. The city is built into the cavern walls themselves, its architecture rising and falling with the natural curve of the stone, as though the mountain shaped it willingly.

Bridges of pale marble sweep from one tier to the next, arching gracefully across the open air, untouched by decay. Their surfaces glimmer faintly with the same blue light that radiates from the lake — a colour so soft it feels like starlight trapped in water.

At the heart of the city rises a tower of impossible height, its peak broken but still proud. Spiral etchings wrap its exterior, the same ancient patterns carved along the stairway above — only here they glow with a faint silver pulse… alive, somehow, humming with forgotten purpose.

Beneath the dim blue light, I catch movement in the streets below — a lone shadow drifting across a bridge toward the city’s central structure.

Caden!?

Instinct flares. I almost push off the ledge, wings tightening for the dive — but before I leap, another shadow shifts into view. Then another crosses in the opposite direction, passing without acknowledgement. Soon I see more shapes, dozens of them, all drifting toward the same bridge. From this height they appear human, but their forms are blurred by a swirling black mist that distorts their edges.

A cold pressure slips through the air, snaking into my feathers.

The figures freeze.

In perfect unison, every head tilts upward. Searching.

One of them locks onto me. Its arm rises, trembling, and points directly at the sky.

Directly at me.

A low hiss unfurls across the city — like a serpent tasting the air.

Then the shapes surge forward. In unison once more, they break into a run, charging across the bridge toward the staircase’s entrance below. More figures spill from alleys, doorways, and shadowed courtyards — an unending tide of black mist and hollow silhouettes.

Panic clamps around my chest, a cold iron grip that stops my breath.

They are coming for me.

How did they know I was here?