Chapter 962: Beneath the Observatory
The observatory appeared shortly before nightfall.
The structure occupied the top of an isolated elevation and seemed to have been carved directly from the dark rock. A square tower rose above the main building, still intact despite the broken windows and deep cracks in the walls. The remains of a low wall surrounded the outpost, and an old stone path climbed in curves toward the gate. The imperial banners had disappeared long ago, but their iron supports remained attached to the tower, creaking in the dry wind.
The team sent to protect the location waited outside. There were eight soldiers, all armed, accompanied by the officer responsible for the first reconnaissance. He descended the slope to receive them, but his expression did not match that of a group merely guarding an abandoned building.
"Any problem?" Cassandra asked.
The officer gave a brief salute.
"We did not enter, as ordered. We did not remove any documents either."
Monica looked at the closed gate.
"But?"
He hesitated before answering.
"During the afternoon, we heard noises coming from inside. We thought parts of the structure were collapsing, so we circled the building to inspect it. We found no open entrance, no footprints, and no sign of movement in the windows."
Strax dismounted.
"What kind of noise?"
"At first, it sounded like wood dragging across the floor. Then we heard something striking the lower section of the tower. Always three times, with several minutes between each sequence."
Frieren approached the wall and placed one hand against the stone. Her expression changed almost immediately. She removed the measuring crystal, but the instrument did not merely glow. The internal light surged at once, filling the entire rod with an intense green color.
"There is accumulated mana beneath the building," she said. "Much more than we encountered along the road."
Monica looked toward the entrance, then at the dry terrain surrounding it.
"Does the observatory have a basement?"
The officer opened the old report he had found near the gate.
"The imperial blueprint mentions a small underground storage room used for water and supplies. Nothing else."
Strax walked toward the main door. The metal was rusted, but the wood remained solid. There were no signs that anyone had recently tried to enter or leave. He placed his palm against the surface and remained still for several seconds, using his senses to reach inside the building.
At first, he detected only stone, wood, and dust.
Then he felt a vibration.
It was not a heartbeat. It lacked enough rhythm for that. It seemed like something slowly scraping against the deepest part of the foundation, stopping whenever the wind weakened. Strax moved his hand away and looked at Cassandra.
"Prepare the soldiers. Four remain outside. The rest enter with us."
Monica dismounted and handed the reins to one of the guards.
"No immediate combat."
"I remember."
Mercedes created two small spheres of ice and kept them floating above her shoulders as sources of light. Frieren adjusted her backpack, Cassandra drew her short sword, and the soldiers formed two lines near the entrance. Strax grabbed the handle and forced it just enough to break the rusted mechanism. The door opened with resistance, scattering dust through the dark corridor.
The smell that emerged was not the smell of abandonment.
It was dry, mineral, and strangely fresh.
As though someone had opened a passage into the heart of the desert.
They entered without creating unnecessary noise. The first room contained old tables, chairs covered in dust, and closed cabinets. Faded maps still hung on the walls. Nothing seemed to have been touched in decades, but a clean trail crossed the floor toward the staircase leading to the tower, wide enough to suggest that something heavy had passed through recently.
Cassandra crouched and touched the mark.
"It was not dragged from the entrance. It begins in the center of the room."
Frieren brought the light closer and found small dark particles mixed with the dust. She collected one with tweezers, compared it with the fragment of shell found after the battle, and raised her eyes.
"It is the same material."
Monica remained still for an instant, analyzing the trail across the floor, the old maps, and the staircase.
"Then one of those creatures was here."
Strax looked at the mark again.
"Or it began here."
Before anyone could respond, three blows traveled through the floor.
Hard, deep, and close enough to make the furniture vibrate.
The soldiers raised their weapons, Mercedes froze the entrance to the corridor to prevent anything from passing behind them, and Frieren looked at the measuring crystal. The green light had disappeared. In its place, a dark pulse traveled inside the rod, synchronized with something beneath the structure.
Monica opened the observatory map and compared the position of the blows with the blueprint. The underground storage room should have been beneath the eastern wing, but the sound had come from below the tower, where no structure was recorded.
Cassandra approached the staircase.
"There is a hidden passage."
Strax was already watching the center of the room, exactly where the clean trail began. He pushed a broken table aside with his foot and found an iron plate almost completely covered in dust. It was not an ordinary door. It was circular and fixed to the floor by eight locks, all of them opened from above.
Monica wiped part of the surface with her sleeve. Beneath the dust appeared an old imperial symbol and a sentence engraved around the edge. Frieren brought the light closer so they could read it.
DO NOT OPEN WHILE THE GROUND IS BREATHING.
No one spoke for several seconds.
There was no need.
The sentence was old, direct, and had been engraved by someone who clearly expected others to find that place in the future.
Then the ground beneath the circular plate moved.
Not as the result of a blow.
It rose several centimeters and descended again, pushed by something on the other side. The movement repeated in a slow, continuous rhythm, like deep breathing traveling through tons of stone.
Strax placed one hand on the metal. The heat rising from below increased with every cycle, and there was something else within it: hundreds of small, rapid, overlapping vibrations spreading across an area far larger than the observatory itself.
He raised his eyes toward Monica.
"The outpost was not built to observe the desert."
Frieren stared at the imperial symbol engraved on the plate, understanding the conclusion at the same moment.
"It was built to observe what exists beneath it."
A new sequence of blows struck the structure, this time stronger. The entire tower groaned, small stones fell from the ceiling, and somewhere beneath their feet, something long scraped across the underside of the plate as though it had finally realized there were people on the other side.
Monica slowly closed the map.
They had come to that place searching for old records about a distant threat.
Now they knew the first answer was not preserved in the documents.
It was alive, breathing beneath the observatory and, apparently, beginning to awaken.