THE LAST KEEPER

Sagiri slowed as the land ahead began to change. The desert flattened into long stretches of dark stone and dead earth, and far in the distance, the horizon appeared broken as if the world itself had split open. From where he stood, Boni did not look like a valley. It looked like an enormous wound carved into the land. Towering black cliffs rose around it in jagged walls that stretched so far outward they disappeared into haze, their surfaces uneven and scarred as though something ancient had torn through them long ago.

Even from that distance, the scale felt wrong. The cliffs dwarfed everything around them, casting massive shadows across the surrounding terrain. Nothing moved near it. No birds crossed above it. No sound carried from within.

Sagiri could not feel any sign of life yet. Perhaps they were buried so deep in the loins of the valley.

He needed to find the opening. Well, there was only one way in and out of Boni Valley, and it wasn’t that hard to find. The place’s rocky peaks were cold and covered with mist and darkness, however. not that it could slow him down. Sagiri jumped down from where he stood and began moving closer and closer to the valley.

The closer and closer he got, the more enormous it got. Time to find the single opening into the no-return valley. Sagiri circled the place, moving at top speed until he saw a dark opening curved from darkness itself. The closer the eye drifted toward the opening, the darker it seemed to become, swallowing light instead of reflecting it. He could still not perceive the twenty-two who could be trapped well and those trapping them. Just how deep into the valley were they?

Sagiri slowed down into a walk, moving from wall to wall of the opening until he burst clear of the entryway.

Beyond those walls, only fragments could be seen. Uneven forests, collapsed structures buried beneath overgrowth, deep stretches of fogged darkness where the valley floor dropped out of sight entirely. The entire place looked abandoned by the world itself, silent in a way that felt unnatural. The walls of black stone rose so high on either side that they almost erased the sky above him. The deeper he walked, the colder the air became, the heat of the desert fading behind him until only cold stones remained.

Where was everyone? How were they even surviving in such a cold place? Why did the college instructors assigned to them let them go into the place? Well, it was difficult to control these two teams, especially, but this was just careless.

At first, the path seemed simple, a single trail winding downward between stone ridges and scattered dead trees, but after a while, the valley began to change. The ground split into multiple directions. Narrow passages appeared between towering rock formations, twisting sharply before vanishing into darkness. The deeper he moved, the less natural the valley felt. Massive slabs of broken rock leaned over the paths like collapsing ceilings, cutting away light and turning entire sections into shadow. Old ruins appeared without pattern, half-buried stairways leading nowhere, shattered pillars emerging from the ground at strange angles, fragments of walls standing alone in places they should not exist.

It indeed looked like someone or a tribe used to live within the rocks, yet now it looked dead and barren.

Every direction began to resemble the last. Long corridors of stone opened into dead ends, while other paths spiraled into narrow circular routes that quietly returned to where they started. The place was beginning to look like a maze. The maze did not feel unnatural to sagiri. It did not feel like it was built, but it did not look like it was natural.

It felt twisted over centuries into something unnatural. Even sound behaved strangely there. Footsteps echoed from the wrong directions, and sometimes the valley carried noises from deeper within that vanished the moment he stopped moving. Boni slowly stopped feeling like a mere valley. It oddly felt alive to Sagiri.

He had always known Kiuga was smart, but it seemed like he was still a man and did not escape the manhood measuring contest. The ladies of Kafika were indeed something. It was hard not to feel competitive towards them. What was even more odd was that the place felt alive, yet Sagiri couldn’t really pinpoint a sign of life, nor could he hear any heartbeats. His sense had grown sharper in the desert. Perhaps because his roots and tribe were from the south, he did not understand the logic.

Sagiri kept going deeper and deeper. He could also feel the fact that something wanted him to go further, so much further, so that he could not be able to come out. He could have sworn he was going in circles, but he knew he wasn’t. The further he went. The colder it got.

Sagiri did not know how long he had been moving, but he knew he was close.

At some point, even Zaira stirred and opened its eyes before shutting them again.

”So you felt it too, huh? Can you breathe fire or something?” sagiri asked. He heard about a mythical creature that breathed fire. Well, that was only mythical anyway.

There was silence, of course. Had the place caused him to run mad, so much so that he could start thinking about mythical beasts.

Sagiri did not feel threatened in the slightest, but he was beginning to get worried about the two stupid squads and their even stupider instructors.

Sagiri stopped moving at some point. He was feeling a little hungry, and he needed to eat. Thank you, Seya, he thought. He ate the last of the ration left and drank the last of the water. Now he was trapped as well. He just hoped it did not take long to find the damned kids. For putting them in danger, he had a big bone to chew with the instructors.

His sitting for a while could help him think about any fact he had missed. sagiri climbed a rock and sat on it. He folded his legs under him, a bad habit from the meditative hours. It indeed made him relax.

It did not take him long before he felt something deeper in the valley. Six heartbeats or so. very faint.

six!

Where were the rest!