Transcendent Odyssey [Coffeepen]

PREVIOUSLY-

Leon closed the book, his eyes meeting Threxil’s.

"Don’t think of it,"

Threxil muttered.

Leon, already on his way, whispered to air.

"Let’s try this."

----x----

Leon’s steps slowed, then ceased altogether.

Before him loomed a structure—ancient, vast, and quietly menacing. It rose from the earth like the ribcage of some long-dead beast, curved in great arcs of pale, weathered marble. Vines crawled across its flanks, creeping tendrils clinging to the stone like desperate fingers. They had slithered their way through every crack and seam, wrapping columns, curling around broken statues, draping like wilted banners from the archways above.

The colosseum did not roar. It brooded.

Its silence wasn’t the silence of abandonment—it was the silence of memory, of blood-soaked sands and names shouted into the heavens only to be forgotten moments later. The kind of silence that thickens the air, makes the lungs labour, makes the ground feel hollow beneath your feet.