Elsewhere in the forest, a thin man with floating seal-like runes orbiting his shoulders stopped in front of a particularly dense tree. He had entered through one of the gaps the Masters had left open and had been moving carefully ever since. His name was not widely known among the other multiversals. His face was forgettable.
But his rune foundation was extremely solid — solid enough that the living scripts responded to him almost naturally. Among everyone who had entered the ruin so far, he ranked somewhere in the top ten for pure rune mastery.
He rested two fingers on the bark and read in silence for almost a full minute. The seals around his shoulders spun slowly, processing. Then a residual intent surfaced. Dense. Old. Waiting.
He let it take him.
---
The forest vanished.
The void around him was different from anything he expected. He was no longer in a forest. Just empty, endless dark in every direction.
"Where is this?" he muttered under his breath.
