Cadryn stopped and first centered himself, and then embracing Flux he reached out fully touched the artifact. The artifact responded immediately with amazing force. Cadryn sensed sentience, like a living entity had been startled awake
The entire bookshop rippled slightly, like someone was shaking out a towel. The hair on the back of everyone head stood on end. It made Cadryns skin crawl. The warriors feel it too and it causes them to hesitate.
Cadryn feels the sweet embrace of the flux, and something more, something older, something massive, something awakening and remembering. Cadryn feels this but has no control over it. His only choice is to let it flow.
The artifact reveals intelligence. It pulls towards the crack in the back wall that just materialized. It is an exit, the exit for him and it wasn’t there moments ago. As he draws nearer the flux, seemingly of its own accord begins to part and spread the crack into an opening he can walk thru.
He slips toward it as the two warriors surge forward at last, blades drawn, flux-nets widening. Cian warns them to hold back—something in the room is wrong—but his voice is thinner than usual. The flux is still trying to reshape him, tugging at his form like wet clay resisting the sculptor.
The artifact pulses again. The books that Cadryn animated earlier begin to twitch. Not fully alive, but reacting to the same call he feels. Cadryn steps into the crack in the wall, and instantly the world bends.
It isn’t a portal. It’s more like stepping into a memory of Earth—roots, stone, and distant thunder layered into one impossible space. The artifact glows faintly. He feels as though he’s been pulled beneath the skin of the world itself.
Behind him, Cian lunges past the two warriors, determined to reach the portal before it closes, but the moment his hand crosses the threshold the ancient force rejects him. Not violently—just a firm, absolute denial. Cadryn sees the shock in Cian’s distorted form.
The portal closes. Cadryn is alone in this strange, interior realm of Earth. He is standing in a cavern-like hollow where the air hums with a low, ancient vibration. The artifact’s pulse syncs with the ground, and in that small shared rhythm he senses the truth:
He has stepped into a place Earth kept hidden even from the Overlord.
Ridgewalker's Notebook 