CHAPTER 186: THE BASIN’S RUIN-PATTERNS BEGIN TO REACT.

The descent into the inner basin became quieter the deeper the group moved. The earlier chatter that had filled the march—Lucy asking about the map intervals, Liza double-checking the formation spacing, Arios calmly adjusting their pace—faded into a steadier rhythm. Their boots pressed into the soft moss that coated the basin floor, leaving faint impressions that vanished minutes later, absorbed back into the strange living ground.

Above them, the sun dipped behind the basin’s curved rim, cutting off half the sky and dimming the light. The basin always seemed to swallow brightness faster than the rest of the island, as if it were an enormous bowl designed to trap shadows.

Lucy kept glancing around. "Still no monsters. This place feels... wrong."

Liza nodded. "Too quiet. No bird sounds. No mana signatures. Nothing."

Arios didn’t respond immediately. He had picked up a stone—one of the countless dark, smooth stones scattered across the basin floor—and rolled it in his fingers. It looked like any ordinary stone at first glance, but when he turned it under the light, faint lines ran across its surface in perfect geometric symmetry. Not cracks. Not scratches. Patterns.

"Same designs as earlier," Arios said.

Lucy walked beside him and leaned in to look. "The repeating ones?"

"Yeah," Arios answered. "Triangles inside spirals. Or spirals inside triangles. Depending on how you tilt it."

Liza slowed down and tapped another stone with her boot. "It’s everywhere. But nothing else is here." She scanned the brush for movement. "It feels like the island is... waiting."

They continued, and the ground gradually sloped downward. At first the incline was gentle, barely noticeable. Then steeper. The moss shifted into a denser layer, turning almost velvet-like under their feet. When Lucy stepped down, her heel sank a little deeper than before.

"This is new," she murmured.

Arios tested the spot beside her. His boot pressed into the moss with a faint crunch. "It’s thicker."

Liza crouched and touched the surface. "It isn’t moss anymore. It’s something else."

The layer peeled slightly under her fingers, almost like dried seaweed or overlapping sheets of thin leather. Beneath it, the soil looked richer—almost black.

Lucy frowned. "Still no monsters."

Arios scanned outward again. The silence wasn’t just silence. It had weight to it. The kind that settled on your skin, making it feel like something unseen was watching from far away.

He kept walking.

They passed the point where their path split—left toward a shallow stone formation they had marked earlier, right toward what Lucy had called "the not-a-ravine ravine," a narrow path that had seemed too symmetrical to be natural. They chose right. It led deeper, according to the map, and they needed to reach the basin’s central zone to complete Phase Three.

As they advanced, the air grew colder. Not enough to see their breath, but enough that Lucy hugged herself once, muttering, "Why does the temperature drop like this in the middle of the day?"

Arios checked the humidity by the way the dirt clung to his boots. "No wind. No water sources. The cold shouldn’t settle this fast."

Liza tilted her head. "Feels like mana is pulling inward."

They walked another five minutes in silence before Arios spoke again.

"There," he said.

It was faint at first. A sound. Like a distant tapping. Not rhythmic. Not steady. A slow, almost deliberate knock against stone.

Lucy heard it too and stiffened. "Finally. Something."

Liza shifted slightly to Arios’s left, sliding into formation automatically. "Keep your guard up."

The tapping stopped.

Then resumed. This time louder, closer.

They rounded the corner of the ravine-like path, and the space opened into a circular clearing surrounded by stone walls. It was almost perfect in shape, a smooth bowl carved into the basin floor. At the very center sat a single slab of stone—rectangular, almost like an altar.

Lucy exhaled. "This looks like a ritual site."

Liza took a cautious step. "Be careful."

Arios didn’t approach the stone immediately. Instead, he observed the entire clearing. The walls weren’t rough. They were polished. Polished by what, he didn’t know—water wouldn’t have flowed like this. Time wouldn’t have carved such symmetry. Something deliberate had shaped the place.

He finally walked forward, Lucy and Liza following at his flanks. Every footstep echoed faintly, as though the clearing amplified sound.

Arios placed a hand on the stone slab.

Nothing happened.

But the tapping stopped completely.

Lucy swallowed. "Arios..."

"I know." He narrowed his gaze. "Look beneath."

The slab wasn’t solid rock. It was composed of those same patterned stones—hundreds of them—tightly compressed together to form a single shape. From above, it looked like a coherent object, but up close it was a mosaic, each piece carved with those spirals and triangles.

Liza bent down and touched one. "It’s warm."

Before Arios could answer, the stone beneath her fingers pulsed faintly—once, then stopped.

Lucy stepped back quickly. "Okay. That one moved."

"It didn’t move," Arios corrected. "It reacted."

"To what?" Lucy asked.

Arios studied the slab again. "Maybe to mana. Maybe to touch. Maybe to presence."

Liza stood, her posture firm but uneasy. "So what do we do?"

He thought for a moment. Then placed both hands on the slab and released a small, controlled flow of his mana—not an attack, not a burst, just enough to test a response.

The clearing vibrated.

Lucy gasped and jumped back. "Arios!"

"I’m fine," he said, bracing himself.

The slab began to glow, but not brightly. More like the stone absorbed his mana, shifting the engravings across its surface. The triangles realigned. The spirals elongated. The entire mosaic reshaped in a matter of seconds.

Then, as if settling into a final arrangement, the slab flashed once—and the clearing changed.

The stone walls shimmered, their patterns lighting up in connected veins. Lines of pale blue mana traced across the formations, circling the clearing in a slow, deliberate rotation like a wheel turning in the wrong direction.

Lucy clutched Arios’s sleeve. "That’s not natural. That’s—Arios, someone tampered with this."

Liza stepped back into formation. "Arios. Look up."

He did.

The sky above the basin, once a clean stretch of blue, now looked distorted. Not dark. Not cloudy. Distorted. As if something transparent pressed against the entire dome of the sky.

Arios’s expression hardened. "An illusion field?"

"No," Liza said, her voice low. "Something deeper."

Lucy backed away from the slab. "Arios... we triggered something. Or someone triggered it first."

The ground beneath them rumbled again—stronger this time.

Then a fissure split through the exact center of the slab, running from one end to the other with a grinding crack. The slab didn’t collapse. It opened. Each half slid apart, revealing something beneath it.

A hole.

A perfectly shaped, square descent tunnel made of stone far smoother than anything else on the island.

Lucy stared. "That... wasn’t on any map."

Liza raised her weapon. "We need to decide now. Do we go down, or mark this and retreat?"

Arios didn’t move.

He stared at the tunnel. Listened to it. There was no wind inside. No echo. No sound at all.

"Arios?" Lucy asked.

He finally spoke. "This wasn’t made by nature. And it wasn’t made by the academy."

Lucy blinked. "What are you saying?"

Liza narrowed her gaze. "Arios. Say it clearly."

He looked down into the square tunnel again.

"This part of the island wasn’t built by humans."

Lucy froze. Liza’s grip tightened.

Arios continued, voice even, analytical.

"The patterns. The symmetry. The mana reaction. The shifting formations. This isn’t something the academy could replicate. Not even the upper ranks. And if they could, they wouldn’t use it for a student exam."

Liza exhaled slowly. "So this entire basin..."

Lucy finished the thought with a whisper. "...is artificial?"

Arios didn’t confirm or deny. He simply looked deeper into the newly revealed descent.

It stretched down farther than their lights could reach.

Lucy stepped closer, looking worried. "Arios. If we go down—"

"We won’t go now," he said. "Not yet."

Liza raised an eyebrow. "You’re delaying?"

"Yes," Arios answered. "We’re missing information. If the basin was built—or shaped—by something non-human, then its function might not be what we think. It might not be a combat zone. It could be a containment zone. Or a seal."

Lucy shivered at the word.

Seal.

Arios continued. "And if someone tampered with it from outside... we need to understand the risk before we approach the center."

Liza looked at the moving stone lines again. "...The academy couldn’t have done this."

"No," Arios said. "They couldn’t."

Lucy looked around once more, scanning the distorted sky, the glowing walls, the shifting engravings. "Then who did?"

Arios didn’t answer. He didn’t have an answer. But he had a growing suspicion that this island exam was far more than a simple assessment.

After several seconds of silence, he turned away from the tunnel.

"Let’s regroup."

Lucy blinked. "Regroup?"

"Yes," he said. "We go back to the elevated ridge. Mark this site on the map. Report nothing yet."

Liza nodded calmly. "Agreed."

Lucy stared at him, concern mixing with trust. "Arios... if this is something dangerous—"

"It is," he said simply. "But we’ll handle it."

They began walking back through the ravine path. The light from the slab slowly dimmed behind them, and once they turned the corner, the glow vanished completely, as if the clearing returned to its dormant state.

The tapping sound did not return.

The silence resumed—but it felt heavier now.

Denser.

More aware.

Lucy walked close beside Arios, glancing up at him. "You’re thinking a lot."

"Yeah."

"Worried?"

"Aware," he corrected.

Liza walked on his other side. "Whatever that structure is, we’ll face it when the time comes."

Arios nodded once. His mind was already calculating possibilities, tracing connections, matching the patterns on the stones to the mana behavior, the temperature drop, the eerie stillness.

This island was hiding something.

And now that the slab had reacted to him, whatever was hidden knew he was here.

They climbed the slope back toward the ridge, the quiet stretching between them, tension growing beneath the cool air of the basin. The sky above remained distorted, faint ripples running across the surface like light bending through water.

Lucy noticed and whispered, "The sky’s still doing that."

Arios didn’t look up. "I know."

"It didn’t do that when we arrived this morning."

"I know."

"Does that mean... the island changed because of us?"

Arios didn’t answer immediately.

He finally said, quietly:

"No. It changed because something woke up."

The three continued upward, shadows stretching long across the basin floor.

Phase Three had not ended.

It had only begun to uncover the true nature of the island—and whatever lay beneath.