Page 165 of The Last Remaining Light

Caelyn squeezed her hand briefly. “I will.”

As the group continued onward, the tunnel began to curve before widening into a broad chamber that forced the group to halt.

Instantly, Elowynn understood why.

The engineer stood near the center of the room staring upward, and everyone else soon joined him.

The chamber was enormous.

Its ceiling was swallowed by darkness far beyond the reach of their lanterns, while massive stone pillars rose from the floor in concentric rings around a central platform. Carvings covered nearly every surface, though centuries of damage and neglect had rendered many unreadable. Broken resonance channels crossed the floor in intricate patterns that converged upon the platform at the chamber's center.

Lora finally exhaled a reverent, “Oh."

Releasing Caelyn’s hand, Elowynn stepped forward, lips parted in awe. Her heart quickened with sudden recognition at some of the symbols.

“I have seen these before…” she breathed. “Well, not these exact ones. But… fragments of them.”

Everyone turned to look at her.

“These are illustrations copied from damaged archive records and disputed texts that most scholars dismissed as exaggeration,” she explained. Standing here now, however, she knew this place had once been important.

Tremendously important.

She took a lantern from one of the survivors, then pointed to the platform at the center of the chamber.

“This is not decorative. The convergence patterns are not artistic at all.”

Her head tilted up to the colossal pillars, studying one carefully as she walked around it. “And these had not been constructed simply to support the ceiling.” She paused, blinking. “Everything here has been built for a purpose. A purpose… connected to resonance. To… the city itself.” Another pause, and Elowynn just stared at the engineer.

"These are older than the observatories around Aetheris," she said quietly.

The engineer nodded his agreement. "Much older."

Korvel approached the platform, though he stopped short of stepping onto it. Elowynn suspected he had seen references to places like this before or knew more than he wanted to admit.

"What was this place, though?" Alyra asked.

No one seemed to have an answer.

Eventually the engineer shook his head, breaking the silence. "I don't know."

Elowynn believed him. The chamber felt less like a ruin and more like a machine whose purpose had been forgotten. It didn't feel corrupted or dangerous, however. And its scale defied anything she had expected to find beneath the city.

“The proportions are designed for something larger than people, while the convergence patterns crossing the floor resemble diagrams I have seen in restricted resonance texts. Only… much larger and far more complicated.”

Elowynn stepped closer to the nearest pillar and raised the lantern higher. The light revealed more of the carvings, and with every symbol that emerged from the darkness, the unease twisting through her chest grew stronger.

She stilled.

"Elowynn?" Caelyn asked.

She barely registered her name at first.

“Hold on,” she whispered.

Her eyes moved across the stone, tracing architectural motifs that belonged in Veylspire, not here. Stabilization sigils. Convergence markings. Resonance routing diagrams. She had spent turnings studying variations of these symbols in restricted archives, yet she had never seen them arranged on this scale.

Slowly, she turned back toward the others. "There is nothing in here that is nonfunctional."