Otwin stayed still for a few seconds longer, letting his breathing slow as his eyes adjusted to the low?light overlay. The cavern felt larger now that he could see it, and that somehow made it worse. The walls curved away in a wide bowl, the dome overhead rising higher than any natural cave had a right to.

  Mud dripped softly from above. Somewhere, water trickled through stone.

  He swallowed and shifted his weight, boots sinking slightly into the muck.

  “How did you know about this place?” he asked.

  I detected the presence of missing magitech components in this region, DAC replied. I then utilized built?in sensor arrays to route toward the highest probability location.

  Otwin frowned, turning slowly in place as he took in more of the chamber. “Built?in sensors?”

  Correct.

  He huffed. “Were you going to tell me about them?”

  I just did.

  Otwin snorted quietly and shook his head. He looked around again, really looked this time. The floor was uneven but patterned, not random. Channels ran through the mud, shallow grooves half?filled with debris, all curving toward the center like the remnants of tracks or rails long since buried.

  The walls weren’t just stone. Plates of something darker were embedded at intervals, their edges fused into the surrounding rock. Some were cracked. Others were intact, their surfaces etched with faint geometric lines that the low?light vision picked up easily.

  “Do you know what this is, DAC?” he asked.

  Negative.

  Otwin let out a slow breath. “Yeah. I didn’t think you would.”

  He turned his gaze upward, following the curve of the dome until it vanished into shadow. The structure wasn’t smooth. It was ribbed, reinforced, layered the way large constructions had to be if they were meant to endure stress. Not a shelter. Not a bunker.

  “This is a Tower Drome,” he said quietly. “An old one. Abandoned.”

  The words felt strange in his mouth, like something remembered rather than learned. “I haven’t seen anything like this in… in a long time.”

  Acknowledged, DAC said. Sensors detect no operational equipment.

  “Oh, I’d be shocked if there was any,” Otwin replied. “These places get stripped first. Towers go down, everyone rushes in for the obvious stuff.”

  He took a few careful steps forward, boots squelching as he moved. As he crossed the chamber, more details emerged. Massive frames lay half?buried beneath mud and rock, their shapes suggesting vertical structures assembled horizontally before being raised. Broken gantries jutted from the walls, frozen mid?collapse. Thick anchor points ringed the perimeter, each one large enough to secure something far taller than the chamber itself.

  “But that doesn’t mean it’s empty,” he went on. “Just means the easy things are gone.”

  Otwin stopped near what looked like the remains of a central assembly platform. The surface was warped and cracked, but unmistakably manufactured. Slots and recesses dotted it at regular intervals, sized to accept components that were no longer there.

  “This is where small towers were built,” he said. “Not the big Peel Towers. The kind you set up fast. Defense. Relay. Control.”

  He crouched, brushing mud away from one of the grooves with his gloved hand. Beneath it, metal gleamed faintly.

  He straightened and looked deeper into the structure, toward a series of dark openings along the wall that might once have been access tunnels or storage bays.

  “There might be tools,” he said. “Molds. Frames. Power conduits. Even scrap from failed builds would be worth something.”

  Assessment ongoing, DAC replied.

  Otwin adjusted his grip on the crowbar he’d recovered, testing its weight. The ache in his body reminded him of the fall, but it had settled into something manageable. Familiar.

  “Well,” he said, glancing around the vast, silent chamber. “Let’s see what kind of mess they left behind.”

  He picked a direction and started toward the interior of the Tower Drome, footsteps echoing softly as he moved deeper into a place that had not been meant for men to walk through once it was finished.

  Otwin lost track of time.

  The Tower Drome swallowed sound and sense alike, the low-light overlay turning shadow into texture and depth. Once he started moving through the interior, the aches from the fall faded into the background, replaced by the familiar focus of work. This was what he knew. This was what he understood.

  He began along the outer curve of the chamber, checking the places that made sense first. Broken gantries. Collapsed frames. Any spot where something heavy had once been mounted and then abandoned. His boots squelched through mud and grit as he moved, crowbar in hand, eyes scanning for edges that were too straight to be stone.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  The first find came quickly.

  A housing panel, half buried near the base of a wall, its surface pitted and flaking but unmistakably manufactured. Otwin knelt and dug it free, levering it up with a grunt. The metal beneath the rust was dense and well-worked.

  “Good stock,” he murmured.

  He set it aside and kept going.

  Further in, he found a scatter of components that had clearly been swept into a corner and forgotten. Coupling rings cracked by stress. Power conduits split open and empty, their inner lining stripped long ago. Mounting brackets bent out of true but not shattered. All of it useless as-is, but not worthless.

  Otwin sorted automatically, stacking pieces by type, by size, by how much work they would take to make usable again. Years of scavenging had trained his hands to judge weight and balance in an instant.

  “This place was picked clean,” he said, more to himself than to anything else. “But they didn’t bother with the leftovers.”

  He moved deeper, toward the remains of the central assembly platform. There, half collapsed under mud and stone, lay the tools.

  They were old. Rusted. Handles cracked or swollen from moisture. But they were real tools, not improvised junk. Spanners sized for large fittings. Calipers warped but intact. A cutting torch frame with its power unit long gone.

  Otwin lifted one carefully, testing the heft.

  “Clean you up,” he said quietly, “and you’d work just fine.”

  He laid it down with care, like setting aside something fragile.

  The treasure trove kept growing.

  Storage racks lay toppled against one another, their contents spilled and half-buried. Molds for casting smaller tower segments, their surfaces scarred from repeated use. Jigs designed to hold components steady during assembly. Even a crate of fasteners sealed tightly enough that only the top layer had corroded.

  To anyone else, it would have looked like a ruin.

  To Otwin, it was wealth.

  Not coin. Not numbers on a screen. Real value. Material he could clean, repair, then trade. Things that could be turned into food, shelter, or tools.

  He worked methodically, moving from section to section, pausing only to wipe mud from his hands or stretch his back. The low-light vision made it easy to find things. Every straight edge, every repeating shape stood out.

  By the time he reached a recessed section of wall near the far side of the chamber, he was already planning how many trips it would take to move everything.

  Then the HUD flickered.

  Hidden compartment detected.

  Otwin froze.

  He looked up slowly, eyes following the line of sight the overlay suggested, toward a section of the wall above him where stone met metal in a way that did not quite match.

  “…What?”

  The words hung in the air as he stared at the place, heart beginning to beat a little faster.

  Whatever else this place held, he had not found it yet.

  The message remained fixed in Otwin’s vision, patient and exact.

  Behind the large storage rack. There is a hidden compartment.

  Otwin lowered the tool he had been holding and turned slowly, following the indicated direction. The rack loomed against the curved wall, one of the largest in the chamber. It was heavy industrial work, built to hold bulk components during assembly. Thick struts. Reinforced crossbars. Every bit of it bolted directly into the wall and floor.

  He studied it for a moment, then nodded once.

  “Alright.”

  He searched around for a few minutes and found a screwdriver and crowbar among the scattered tools. The screwdriver went first. He leaned into the upper bolts, testing them one by one. Most of them protested immediately, metal groaning as corrosion fought back. He worked patiently, backing them out a fraction at a time, resetting his grip, forcing them loose through stubborn repetition.

  Several snapped free cleanly.

  Several did not.

  When a bolt head stripped smooth under the screwdriver, Otwin sighed, set the tool aside, and wedged the crowbar beneath it. He struck the bar against the wall, sharp, controlled blows, until the metal gave way with a dull crack. The head sheared off and bounced into the mud.

  “Thought so,” he muttered.

  He moved down the rack methodically. Top to bottom. Left to right. Every bolt was dealt with in turn. Some came free only after he leaned his full weight into the screwdriver. Others had to be broken outright. Sweat ran down his back and into his eyes, mixing with mud and grime. His shoulders burned, and his hands cramped, but he did not rush.

  Rushing broke things. Or caused injury.

  By the time the last bolt clattered to the ground, his arms were shaking slightly. He straightened with a groan and wiped his forearm across his face, smearing dirt and sweat together.

  “That better be worth it,” he said.

  The rack did not answer.

  Otwin planted his feet and put his shoulder into the metal frame. It did not move.

  He grunted and shoved harder. The rack shifted a fraction, then stopped. He repositioned his grip, braced one boot against the wall, and pushed again.

  The feet screeched against stone and metal as the rack slid sideways, the sound echoing harshly through the chamber. It moved inch by inch, heavy enough that every shove left his muscles screaming. Finally, with one last effort, he forced it far enough aside to clear the wall behind it.

  Otwin stumbled back a step and caught himself, chest heaving.

  He looked at the exposed wall.

  It was flat.

  Smooth stone. No handles. No seams. No obvious panels or mechanisms. Just another section of the dome, no different from the rest.

  “…There’s nothing here,” he said.

  The HUD shifted.

  The low-light overlay deepened, edges sharpening as new highlights traced across his vision. What had looked like a uniform surface now showed subtle inconsistencies. Lines too straight. Angles too precise.

  A seam.

  Faint. Almost invisible.

  Press on the left side, DAC instructed.

  Otwin hesitated only a moment, then stepped closer and placed his palm against the indicated spot. He pushed.

  There was a soft click.

  The stone panel shifted outward slightly, just enough to break its seal. Otwin’s breath caught as he hooked his fingers into the narrow gap and pulled.

  The panel swung open on concealed hinges, revealing a dark recess within the wall.

  Otwin leaned in and reached inside.

  His hands closed around cold metal.

  He drew it out slowly, mud and dust sliding off its surface as it emerged into the chamber light. The object was long and cylindrical, nearly four feet in length and a foot across, smooth and seamless except for faint markings that ran along its side.

  Otwin stared at it, heart beginning to pound.

  “What do we have here…?”

  The realization hit him all at once.

  “A… stasis tube?!”