Online: Eiodolon Realms – Child of Ruin-Chapter 49 - 48 – Shadows of the Past

The first thing Eron noticed was the cold.

It wasn’t the kind of chill you got from a drafty house or winter air sneaking through cracks. This was the deep, stale cold of a place untouched for years — an air that felt heavier, as if it carried the weight of memory itself.

His eyes adjusted to the dim glow from a single, flickering lantern hung crookedly from the ceiling. The space beyond the door was larger than he’d expected, far larger than the cramped rooms of the old man’s home above. The stone walls were bare, except for shelves stacked with old tools, dusty vials, and strange, half-assembled mechanisms.

And in the center of the room...

Three long wooden tables.

Each one draped in a heavy, dust-covered cloth.

Eron stepped forward slowly, the medallion still in his hand. The air smelled faintly metallic, and beneath it, something almost sweet — a cloying scent that made his stomach tighten.

He didn’t want to know.

But his curiosity had already carried him past the point of turning back.

With hesitant fingers, he gripped the edge of the first cloth and pulled it away.

The sight froze him where he stood.

It was a body.

A woman — middle-aged, her face pale and serene, as if she were merely sleeping. Her hair was silver-streaked black, neatly braided over one shoulder. Her hands were folded over her chest, clutching a small wooden charm. There was no rot, no decay... but also no breath.

Eron’s throat tightened. He glanced at the second table.

Another body. This time, a young man, no older than Eron himself. The same pale stillness. The same folded hands.

His gaze shifted to the third table — and his stomach lurched.

A little girl.

Her hair, dark and curled, spilled over the side of the table like a cascade of ink. Her hands were tiny, clutching a stuffed toy rabbit with one missing ear. Her face was so peaceful it almost hurt to look at her.

Eron stumbled back, the edge of his boot scraping against the stone floor. His breath came faster, his chest constricting.

"What... what is this?" he whispered to the empty room.

For a moment, the only sound was the faint creak of the lantern swaying slightly above.

Then his mind started piecing together the fragments — the old man’s secrecy, the locked door, the medallion he guarded like treasure. And now... this.

’He killed them.’

The thought came sharp and immediate. Why else would someone hide bodies like this? Why else would they keep them in some hidden chamber beneath their home?

Eron’s jaw clenched. He wanted to believe otherwise, but everything he’d seen since the day he’d started working at the forge suddenly felt darker in hindsight. The old man’s temper. His refusal to speak about his past. The way he always seemed to watch people a moment too long, like he was weighing something in his head.

Eron took a shaky step back, but his eyes were still drawn to the shelves that lined the walls. On them sat rows of jars — some filled with strange, preserved herbs, others with glimmering, dust-covered powders. Books with cracked leather spines were stacked in messy towers, their titles scrawled in a language Eron didn’t recognize.

Near the far wall stood a desk cluttered with sketches and half-finished mechanisms. He moved closer, scanning the papers.

They were diagrams — intricate designs of strange, rune-covered devices, some shaped like bracelets, others like metal disks. In the margins, written in a hurried, almost frantic hand, were notes:

"The binding must hold."

"Essence disperses after the seventh hour."

"Failed again — need stronger conduit."

The words made little sense to him, but the desperation in the handwriting was unmistakable.

At the center of the desk lay something more disturbing — a large, leather-bound journal, open to a page covered in jagged writing:

’They are not gone. Not truly....... I don’t care what it costs.’

Eron’s hand curled into a fist. The text was incomplete there were words missing.

"So that was it. The old man wasn’t just hiding the bodies, he was... experimenting. Doing something unnatural."

His stomach twisted. In every village tale and every guild rumor, such practices led to disaster. Necromancy was outlawed for a reason.

He turned back toward the bodies. The lantern’s light flickered, casting long shadows over the still forms.

The little girl’s stuffed rabbit had a faded blue ribbon around its neck. Something about it hit him harder than he expected — a reminder that she had once lived, laughed, played. Now she lay in this cold room, kept here by a man who couldn’t let go.

Part of him wanted to storm out right now, confront the old man, demand answers. Another part — a quieter, colder part — thought about what he could do with this information. Secrets had value, especially dangerous ones.

Still... there was a flicker of hesitation.

He’d seen the old man show kindness before, even if gruff and begrudging. He’d seen him share food with a hungry traveler, give free repairs to a soldier’s dented armor. Was that all a mask? Or was Eron just seeing what he wanted to see?

He moved closer to the first table again, studying the woman’s face. There was no sign of violence — no wounds, no bruising. She looked... at peace. That didn’t fit the image of a murderer.

And yet... why hide them here? Why keep them like this instead of giving them a burial?

His mind was a whirl of suspicion and doubt.

He turned back to the desk and spotted something else — a small wooden box pushed halfway under a stack of papers. Pulling it free, he opened it to find several tiny glass vials, each holding a glowing, silvery liquid. They pulsed faintly, like liquid moonlight trapped in glass.

Eron didn’t know what it was, but every instinct told him it wasn’t something meant for casual use.

He snapped the box shut and set it down, suddenly aware of how dry his throat had become.

The lantern flickered again. For a heartbeat, the shadows in the room seemed to shift, leaning toward him, and a strange, oppressive weight settled in the air.

He stuffed the medallion back into his pocket, took one last glance at the three still forms, and stepped back toward the open door. His mind was racing, part fear, part grim satisfaction that he’d uncovered the old man’s secret.

What he didn’t know — what he couldn’t know — was that the truth was far from the dark image his mind had painted.

The old man hadn’t killed them.

He had lost them. All of them — wife, son, and daughter — to a sudden, senseless attack years ago, an attack he’d been powerless to stop. Their deaths had shattered him, and in his grief, he’d turned to forbidden knowledge, chasing the faintest whispers of a way to bring them back.

Every failed attempt had cost him more — money, years of his life, fragments of his sanity — but he refused to stop. He wasn’t driven by malice, but by a desperate, unyielding love that refused to accept the finality of death.

But Eron didn’t see that. All he saw was the cold room, the still bodies, and the evidence of dark experiments.

And in his mind, the old man’s fate was already sealed.