Gou is a dark elf in Warhammer

Ryan pushed aside a rotten silk curtain, and in front of him was an archway, behind which was a narrow street. He blinked and shook off the dust in his eyes. He felt as if his face was covered with spider webs, but he knew that there was nothing on his face except the bloodstains before, and he suppressed the urge to shave.

The glass crunched under his feet, and the glass scattered on the road like new-fallen snow, crushed into countless fragments by the passage of time. The glass glittered in the dim light, and strands of light jumped from one fragment to another until the whole road ahead seemed illuminated.

Glass was growing in nooks and crannies, forming huge, fungus-like masses of glass that shimmered and clung to crumbling brick walls, as if the city was being eaten by itself. He saw his own reflection in a gleaming glass, and it was staring back at him, and he was pretty sure it wasn't him because his current self didn't have a wide, inhuman grin.

He wondered who had built this city, if not the pale ghosts that moved through the glass and stone. Dead things, perhaps, that hid as he passed? Or ghosts that glared at him as he passed through the streets?

"What is Moskai?" Ryan asked in a low voice, abandoning his messy thoughts.

"It's not what, it's who. A miracle worker, a craftsman. He is the most outstanding craftsman in this city, no doubt about it. He has designed many miracles, and there is a treasure trove hidden deep in this city. Of course, there are many deep cellars in this city, and some of them are stockpiled. If you are willing to face the pests bravely, you can find all kinds of things." Zuvas said as he patted the broken sword hanging on his waist.

Ryan was about to say something when he stepped on a mushroom. The mushroom let out a high, thin sigh as it deflated, and he almost jumped. Zuvas, who saw this, laughed, and the sound echoed in the street. He glared at Zuvas, but in the end he didn't say anything.

"I seem to have been here before?" After a moment, he looked around, trying to get his bearings. Parts of the city looked very familiar to him, but something was wrong. The distorted reflections of the ruins in the desert, the way the streets narrowed and widened at random, as if two sides were fighting, some buildings were close together, forming a tall balcony and walkway roof above his head.

Did he remember that he had been here before? He glanced down an alley and saw a familiar, shapeless statue standing on a tall pedestal. All around him, glass rose along strangely curved walls, making the road seem wider than it actually was. Thick spider webs covered the road, and sewage flowed quietly from the cracks in the street, turning into a rushing stream, and suddenly stopped again, pouring into the lightless depths.

Everything seems contradictory, but not contradictory in this damn place.

"Not only are humans trapped here, a net has been cast to capture more than just mortal souls," Zuvas said grimly.

"what are you saying?"

"What I want to say is that there are worse things. We are in deep darkness, and all kinds of intelligent creatures and beasts are wandering here, not only souls, but also bodies." Zuvas said while looking around vigilantly, lowered his head to pick up a piece of glass from the ground, and raised it to his eyes. Through the fragments, his mask became distorted, almost turning into a monster.

Ryan didn't want to look at the glass. It was the glass that put him in this situation, but as if some magic was controlling him, he looked at the glass uncontrollably. But a shout cut off his connection with the magic. Somewhere above him, something was shouting, maybe hungry, maybe afraid. Then there was a weird laugh, echoing in the air like the sound of broken glass.

"Did you hear it? The sound of death, it's nearby."

"I didn't hear anything." Ryan shook his head.

"Your ears are weak," Zuvas murmured.

Ryan felt a tingling sensation. He said he didn't hear anything, but he did. Here, his secret passage was useless, but his vision and hearing were still there. The sounds on the street traveled strangely, sometimes fading, sometimes flowing, regardless of distance and volume. The sound of stones hitting each other became a rustle, and low whispers became thunderous. He heard the grinding of stones on stones, and the clatter of horses' hooves.

Suddenly, he felt the ground beneath his feet twitch, and he looked up to see a nearby pillar swaying like a sapling in the breeze.

"Shards! Hide!"

Without Zuvas's shouting, Ryan knew to hide, and he rushed to the lee of a broken wall to seek cover. The moment he found shelter, there was a scream of shattering glass in the distance above, and glittering fragments fell like a flood. Thousands of fragments pierced the stones of the street, some breaking into smaller pieces, while others remained incredibly intact.

Glass dust filled the streets, and he could hear something screaming in the distance. And not just screaming, he heard the sound of steel colliding, and the hiss of some strange weapon, as if it were happening right next to him, and it sounded like someone was taking advantage of the falling debris.

"Do you want me to explain?" Zuvas, who was hiding somewhere else, came out and came to Ryan's side and said. After seeing Ryan's expression, he continued, "Do you really care, or is this just misplaced pride?"

"I want to know, where are you taking me?"

"I'll take you wherever you want to go, my friend. If you want to keep living, just follow me closely."

After standing there for a long time, Ren moved, following Zuvas who was waiting for him ahead. They moved faster, through canyons of stone and glass, pillars rising around them, clustered together like trees. Shrouds of tattered silk and canvas were wrapped around the pillars like pale canopies.

The shrouds rustled as they moved among them, and Ren saw that many of them had strange stains on them, like the outlines left when some body had been wrapped too tightly. Blurred faces twisted and their mouths seemed to twitch, whispering as the shrouds rustled and twisted in a nonexistent wind.

Zuvas did not walk in a straight line, but led Ryan in a circle, sometimes tearing the shroud as he passed by, opening up a wide path in the fake canyon. After a long time, the two of them finally walked out.

"I know what you want to ask. I've been here before, and there was a man following me like you. He had been following me, but when I walked out, he disappeared. Where was he? As I was thinking, a scream interrupted me. The sound came from far away and high up, and the shroud twisted and flapped in joy.

When I looked in the direction of the sound, the scream sounded again, long and deep. This time it was not coming from a high place, but somewhere nearby. "There, over there?" Zuvas said, standing still, pointing randomly.

"The sound came again, this time a thunderous scream, louder than any creature could have made alone. A moment later, I smashed through a broken fence in the road, revealing an invisible alley that seemed to extend upwards through an endless series of jagged stone walls.

I found the man, slumped to the ground, his body looking like it had been there for weeks, his torso twisted as if his last moments were filled with agony. His jaw was twisted apart, his tongue was missing, and his eyes, someone had cut them out, but he was still alive.”

Listening to Zuvas's story, Ryan glanced at the surrounding environment. He could feel that the shadows seemed to be dancing on the stone wall, twisting and spinning with Zuvas's words. He had a sense of being there, and he felt that the person Zuvas was talking about seemed to be none other than him, but...

"Let's go, my friend." Zuvas said softly after noticing Ryan's confusion, and then turned and left.
-
"Do you want to know what happened? Or something else?" Daxus came to the campfire where the team was sitting. He did not sit down, but spoke softly under the gaze of everyone.

"I just want to leave here..." Loxia, who was sitting there in a defensive posture, muttered after seeing everyone shaking their heads.

"Yes, I just want to leave here. I'm going to get something and leave soon." After Dacus finished speaking, he turned and left. He brought the binding spell and the statue with him when he came, so that he could easily get people to come. Maybe he could negotiate a deal? -
Ryan and his new friend came to a street that was both strange and familiar to him, with hundreds of broken pillars sticking out at odd angles from the cracked stone slabs. He felt as if something huge had dug a hole under them and squeezed the entire road down, and a mist hung over the stone and floated in like a cold wave.

Things were moving in the mist, mostly small things. Rats, perhaps? He hoped. Slowly, he became aware of a dull sound intruding, a rhythmic thumping, like a heartbeat.

"Drums? Who's gonna play the drums here?"

"There." Zuvas didn't answer at first, but when the voice echoed down from above, with the sound of metal scraping against stone, he pointed in the opposite direction of the sound.

Ryan looked over as directed, and on a nearby pillar, something glittered in the mist. A moment later, a rope net fell with a thud, and the rope net spread out, revealing the bloody heads of several orcs.

"We are not alone, my friend."

The road through the forest of columns widened to reveal a broad plaza. Mist shrouded the ruins on both sides, and the streets in the distance seemed to be peeled and broken. Something emerged from the ruins, looking like a towering black slab of stone, covered with green and gold veins.

The slab tilted, as if something had pushed it up from below, and stopped just before it broke through the ground. In front of the slab were two huge metal doors, the door frames were made into the shape of flames, or of course, smoke.

The whole square trembled slightly, and a broken wall collapsed with a loud crash of stone.

"aftershock?"

"The ground is unstable, the city shakes, and hidden things are revealed. This is a vault that sometimes appears as the city changes. It bursts through the streets like bone piercing flesh, and every fool with a weapon will flock to it, looking for loot. But the vault is rarely opened, and once it is cracked, it will be catastrophic to all existence." Zuvas stared at the square and spoke to himself.

As if to prove the truth of his words, there was a shudder in the square and things that might have been birds took off screaming from the surrounding ruins.

"Someone is watching us, look." Ryan saw something pale appear in a broken window.

"No, they've been following us. Ghosts are moving between glass, spies are watching where we go, there's a war going on in this city, waged by the living for the dead, and by the dead for the living. We are soldiers, we are commanders, following a strategy that makes no sense to us, so keep a low profile and don't lose your mind." Zuvas said, looking at Ryan, and then continued to move.

The closer they got, the larger the vault seemed to grow. It swelled up to fill Ren's field of vision, looking as big as a castle, with doors taller than he was and five times as wide. He could see the underground corridor leading to the vault clinging to it like barnacles, and a face carved into the door, some kind of grim mask, some unknown face, staring blankly at them as they approached.

"How do you know all this?" "I have been here for a long time, now follow me."

The path ahead sloped downward into a high, vaulted room. Huge stone shelves lined the walls, stretching away into the darkness. Deep corners between the shelves held statues covered in dust, most of them covered in thick cobwebs through which traces of strange glass and metal instruments could be seen. Unseen stills gurgled, perhaps unsettled by their footsteps.

"Now be quiet and careful and don't touch anything."

"I'm not stupid," Ryan responded dismissively, but he paused as something large and dark slid through the glass floor beneath his feet. At first, he thought it was a spilled oil flower, but the thing moved with too much purpose, twisting like a shadow following the light. Purple light flickered deep within the thing, and the longer he stared at it, the harder it was to look away.

"Closer and closer... Closer and closer..."

The needle tip turned into particles and something took shape, round and black.

"Closer and closer... Closer and closer..."

Something touched Ren's armor and he instinctively turned around, raising the Reality Blade.

"I wouldn't listen to them if I were you." Zuvas stepped back and raised his hands in a defensive gesture.

"Who do you listen to?"

"The real dead are all liars. Go away! We are not interested in your lies." Zuvas stomped his feet, and kept stomping his feet. After a moment, he calmed down and stared at Ryan. "They are like moths, attracted by the light emitted by your soul."

"My soul doesn't belong here."

"The air is full of hungry ghosts, especially in places like this, they are like crows seeking decay. Right here, right where it's written in the records." Zuvas said as he searched, and after a moment he reached out and brushed away the thick dust. In a shallow corner behind the dust sat a block-like object nearly three meters high.

"Whose records?"

"A... being I once knew." This time Zuvas hesitated.

"What's that in your hand?"

"A key, or a map?" Zuvas said, pointing to the circular slot on the block-shaped object.

"How can something so small open such a large vault?" Ren muttered to himself, watching Zuvas put the key into place and turn it. A moment later, he got his answer, a grinding sound, the click of thousands of invisible gears and levers moving at the same time. As the mechanism inside the door moved, stone shattered, the ground shook, and dust rose.

The vault opened, and it was pitch black inside. The foul air blew out, making Ryan feel suffocated. Then, he heard huge footsteps coming from inside.

Thanks to the elf's vision, he could vaguely see the existence that made the sound. The huge claws were carved from glass and covered with gold patterns. A heavy humanoid creature six meters tall was walking and patrolling in a regular manner. It looked like it was carved from a whole piece of huge glass, and its proportions were clumsy and featureless.

In a deep alcove within the disembodied skull, a contraption resembling a miner's lamp rotated with a harsh clicking sound, and a faint light seeped through the rattling metal panels.

"Construct?" At this moment, the heavy humanoid creature reminded Ryan of the sacred Titan he found in Elsing Alvin. Although they looked different, their essence seemed to be the same.

"Yes, this is a war golem. Now, we need to go in."

Ryan looked at Zuvas with a look that said, "Are you kidding me?"

"Go in, it's not safe here."

"I chose to come here with you because you promised me. And is he safe? This construct is obviously guarding the vault. I'm sure he will launch an attack as soon as we enter the vault." Ryan said in a low voice.

"This is not a conflict! Yes, the war golem will attack, so... this time you run to the left, and I will lead the war golem away."

"this time?"

Before Renn could finish his question, Zuvas moved, and his movement was like touching a cordon. The war golem straightened up, and the glass panels swung wide open. Light and heat filled the air, and a pure white light emanated from the skull of the construct. The beam of light cut through the square, burning through the stones and pillars, burning everything into black slag, but he dodged and was not burned into greasy dust.

Soon, a second beam of light shot out, and Zuvas, who kept moving, once again dodged this almost fatal blow.

Ryan was dumbfounded. If he could, he wanted to ask: Why are you so good at hiding, as if you know the landing point and trajectory of the light emitted by the construct. As he was watching, the voices rang out from his ears again, but he did not look back this time. He knew what was waiting for him behind him. If he was controlled, he would probably encounter the looters that Zuvas mentioned. He was stuck there, facing the looters...

The scenes of his communication with Zuvas flashed through his mind, and he had a very strange feeling, so strange that it could not be described in words. He took a deep breath and was ready to believe Zuvas once. Even though it was ridiculous, he decided to believe Zuvas once.

A cold wind blew toward him, and he moved quickly, climbing the cracked steps and seeking shelter on the other side of the shadowy arch at the top. A moment later, a hundred of him were running through the shattered hall of mirrors. They were not all alike, not all of them elves. One of them wore tarnished battle armor, and his gaunt face had a look of determination instead of fear. Another was a stinking thing covered in leprous sores, holding a pitted axe.

He did as Zuvas said, and a deep sense of uneasiness came over him. The shadows on the wall loomed over him, as if approaching him. He wanted to fight, to kill, but there was nothing here to vent his anger, only reflections and whispers.

He felt breathless, the air filled with smoke and ghosts. Everything around him seemed to bend away from him, like a wheel, up and down. He saw the statue smiling at him, a happy expression full of malice and mockery. He could hear glass breaking and people screaming, like a battle, in the distance.

His reflection was there too, encouraging him, cursing him, pleading with him. They wanted him to run, run, stop. A dozen voices were all his, echoing in his head, shouting conflicting instructions as he readied his weapon.

He kept running, as if he would never stop, until the end of time, until a figure suddenly rushed out and pulled him down. He stumbled and fell, and even the Reality Blade in his hand fell to the ground and rolled away, but he did not give up resistance. He instinctively swung his fist, and his fist hit the metal. It was only at this time that he saw that it was Zuvas who pulled him.

The Reality Blade clicked and slid over the edge, falling into the gap.

"So it fell there." Zuvas stepped back, fixed his mask, and looked at the vanished Reality Blade and whispered. Then he asked Ryan, who had stabilized, "Do you want me to explain?"

"Have we met before?"

"not yet."

"Why are we here? What's in here?" He looked around. He seemed to know this place, though vaguely. It was different in some way, like a reflection within a reflection.

"Not yet. But what will grow in such soil? What will be born from this cocoon of stone and glass? Gods are different from mortals. They do not drift on the river of time. Instead, they are like water itself. They are everywhere and yet they are nowhere." Zuvas turned around, opened his arms, and smiled.

"Maybe a new god is being born here, a new challenger. Maybe there is nothing here, maybe the only voice I can hear is my own voice, echoing in the darkness. Maybe this is all there was, have I ever told you how I got here?" After saying that, he lowered his arms, as if very tired.

"No."

"I died once, but remember, my friend, not this time! Then I came back, and time folded up here before I got here, and I died and came back again, once, twice, and again, and again, and all the time I was searching for the right path, the one I had taken before. Now that I see it, I can't help but wonder, what if...?"
"What if I ignore? What if I continue like this, letting the past run its course? Time is a circle, my friend, a cycle that repeats itself. What was, what is, and what will be, always will be, that's what I've learned here. The cycle must repeat itself again and again until the being that started it is satisfied."

"and then?"

"Then let's enter the next cycle, or... the end!" Zuvas raised his head and stared at Ryan.

PS: It's already obvious... the settlement will be made tomorrow. (End of this chapter)