The symbols on their surfaces bothered him more than he wanted to admit. There was no language or magical script he recognized.

When he tried to focus on individual symbols, they seemed to resist comprehension, sliding away from his understanding like oil on water.

All of the statues were clearly warriors – their builds spoke of strength and training, their poses those of fighters who had known countless battles.

The craftsmanship was impossibly perfect. Every detail was rendered with such precision that Leon could make out individual strands of hair, the texture of fabric, the fine lines of age or laughter around eyes that would never blink again. These weren't carved statues – or if they were, the artist possessed skill beyond mortal comprehension.

Beside him, Seraphine gasped, but her shock came from an entirely different source. She was unaware of Leon's observations about the abyssal connection. She couldn't detect the faint corruption that made his instincts scream warnings. To her eyes, these statues were magnificent works of art, achievements of sculptural mastery that shouldn't exist in a minor kingdom at the edge of nowhere.

"These are incredible," she breathed, taking a step forward before Leon's hand on her arm stopped her. "The detail, the artistry... Leon, look at their faces. They look so real, so alive despite being stone. It's as if the sculptor captured their very souls in rock."

Her purple eyes sparkled with appreciation for what she saw as artistic achievement. "And this palace – it's far too grand for a kingdom like Miles. This architecture, these decorations... this should be the capital palace of a major realm, not a minor kingdom that barely appears on most maps. How did they afford this? Where did they find artisans capable of such work?"

She was right about the palace itself being incongruous. The building that rose behind the statue garden was a masterpiece of architectural ambition. Soaring towers connected by flying buttresses that seemed to defy gravity, walls of white marble shot through with veins of gold and silver, windows of colored glass that cast rainbow patterns across the courtyard. Every surface was decorated with intricate carvings and precious metal inlays. This was a palace that should have bankrupted a kingdom ten times the size of Miles to construct.

Leon remained silent, his mind racing through possibilities and implications. The connection between these statues and the abyssal creature was undeniable to his senses. Still, the nature of that connection remained unclear. Were these people who had been transformed? Guardians created through abyssal corruption? Or something else entirely, something his experience hadn't prepared him for?

The arrangement bothered him more the longer he studied it. The concentric circles weren't just decorative – they formed a pattern that suggested containment, or perhaps focus. The pathways between the statues created specific routes that would funnel visitors along predetermined paths. It was defensive, but also something more. Ritualistic, perhaps.

"Stay close," Leon finally said, his voice carrying a warning that made Seraphine's appreciation dim slightly. "Don't touch anything. These aren't just statues."

Seraphine looked at him more carefully, noting the tension in his posture, the way his eyes moved constantly across the courtyard as if expecting an attack. "What do you mean? What are they?"

"I'm not certain yet," Leon admitted, though his suspicions were growing stronger with each passing moment. "But they're connected to an abyssal monster somehow."

These words cause the entire Aura around Seraphine to change completely.

He took a careful step forward, testing the ground beneath him. The statues remained motionless, but he could feel something in the air change, a subtle shift in pressure that suggested awareness. They were being watched, evaluated, and measured by standards he didn't understand.

The closest statue was a warrior, a man who appeared to be in his thirties, frozen in a pose of salute with his sword held vertically before his face. The symbols on his stone flesh were denser here, covering his arms and chest in intricate patterns that hurt to look at directly. Leon could see every detail of the man's face – the slight scar above his left eyebrow, the laugh lines around his eyes, the determined set of his jaw. This had been a person once, Leon was increasingly confident. A living, breathing human transformed into stone through some process connected to the abyssal corruption.

"The smell," Leon murmured, more to himself than to Seraphine. "It's the same but more aged, faded."

Seraphine wrinkled her nose, trying to detect what Leon was smelling.

But she can't smell anything.

Moving carefully along the prescribed pathway, Leon led them deeper into the statue garden. Each figure they passed was unique, perfectly preserved in stone with those strange symbols covering their forms.

The pathway curved and wound, forcing them to pass close to certain statues while keeping them at a distance from others. Leon noticed that the statues with denser symbol patterns were the ones the path approached. At the same time, those with fewer markings were kept at the periphery. There was meaning here, purpose to the arrangement he couldn't quite grasp.

As they moved deeper into the garden, the smell grew marginally stronger, and Leon's heartbeat continued its accelerated rhythm. His body was reacting to danger that his mind couldn't fully identify; instincts honed through countless battles were warning him that he was walking into something far more complex than a simple treasury raid.

The palace doors loomed ahead, massive constructs of black wood bound with silver and gold. They stood open, which was unusual in itself. No palace left its main doors open and unguarded, especially not one containing a treasury worth raiding. The invitation was obvious, almost insulting in its clarity.

"This is a trap," Seraphine stated, her warrior instincts finally overcoming her artistic appreciation. "No palace is left this open, this undefended."

"Not a trap," Leon corrected, his voice thoughtful. "Or not exactly. Something happened here, something that transformed these people into statues. The palace isn't defended because everyone who would defend it is already here, frozen in stone."

He paused at the threshold of the open doors, looking back at the hundreds of statues arranged in their precise pattern. The speculation that had been forming solidified into near certainty. These had been people once, living inhabitants of the palace, transformed through abyssal corruption into these stone sentinels. But unlike the king who had become a monster, these had become... something else. Guardians, perhaps, or warnings, or simply the victims of an experiment that had spread beyond control.

"The king of this kingdom," Leon said suddenly. "What do you know of him?"

Seraphine frowned, searching her memory. "Very little. Miles has always been insular, keeping to itself. Their king... I believe he's been ruling for an unusually long time. Decades, at least, possibly longer. They trade occasionally but rarely participate in regional politics."

Decades. Long enough for slow corruption to take hold, for experiments with abyssal power to be conducted, for an entire palace worth of people to be transformed into stone sentinels. Leon wondered if the king of Miles was even human anymore, or if he had become something else entirely, something that had turned his own people into these frozen guardians.

The darkness beyond the open doors seemed to breathe, exhaling air that was notably cooler than the afternoon warmth of the courtyard. Leon could sense more inside – more statues certainly.

"We proceed," Leon decided, "but carefully. Whatever might still be present; if these statues can be activated somehow, we could find ourselves surrounded by hundreds of stone warriors."

Seraphine nodded, her hand moving to her weapon. The playful excitement of their journey had been replaced by professional wariness. She might not fully understand what Leon was sensing, but she trusted his instincts.

As they stood at the threshold, preparing to enter the palace proper, Leon took one last look at the statue garden. In the afternoon sun, the stone figures cast long shadows that seemed to reach toward the palace doors like grasping fingers. The symbols on their surfaces appeared to pulse in the light, creating an optical illusion of movement that made the statues seem alive despite their stillness.

Whatever secrets the palace of Miles contained, whatever had transformed these people into stone, whatever connection existed between this place and the abyssal corruption he had encountered – the answers lay within. The treasury they had come to raid seemed almost secondary now to the mystery that surrounded them.

With Seraphine close beside him, Leon stepped through the doorway into the palace, leaving the garden of stone sentinels standing their eternal watch in the fading afternoon light. The darkness swallowed them, and for a moment, Leon could have sworn he heard something that sounded like stone grinding against stone, as if the statues had shifted slightly in their positions.

But when he glanced back, they remained exactly as they had been, frozen in their grand poses, weapons at rest, waiting for something that might never come – or perhaps had already arrived...

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.