It was already Quin’s fifth day in the forest but apart from the Fire Wolf pack he did not find any wild beasts that were willing to fight him, which made him rather disappointed. Alright, today’s my last day here, as I’ve already spent more time here than I had planned. However, there was no change during the rest of the day, so on the sixth day he decided to go home. Well, at least the landscape is quite nice. Quin tried to look at the bright side of the things.

It was late at night when he started to feel something strange but familiar. He could not figure it out for a long time, but what he knew was that it was gradually increasing. Later, he realized why he felt that it was familiar: it was eerily similar to the calling he experienced during his journey to Hounxi. For a while, he did not even notice that he was instinctively going toward a certain direction, and there was no doubt it was from where he felt the calling.

After about two or three hours it seemed that he had finally arrived. What lay in front of his eyes was a tall, black stone monolith. It somewhat resembled an obelisk, however, it was clearly in ruins, so it was hard to make accurate comparisons. What could this be? he wondered.

As Quin started to inspect it he noticed that its sides used to be covered by some sort of carved symbols but time had eroded most of them. It took him quite a while to identify at least one of them and that made him quite surprised. They are... They are the same symbols we’ve seen in that pyramid! How can this be? I’m not even in the Wilderness, it should be hundreds of kilometers away! Then, in the next moment, the world turned into complete darkness. Damn, what’s happening? He looked around, searching for clues, but there was nothing but pitch black darkness.

Quin did not know how much time had actually passed, but to him it felt like an eternity until he was finally able to see at least something. At first it just looked like a black cloud without a form, and he was reminded of something. The strange thing was that he could not recall the exact memory, when, where and how it happened, but he knew that there was another time when he thought he was in absolute darkness but saw something that was even darker, and it was the same now with this smoke cloud.

As time passed it gradually started to take on a shape of some kind. Is it a worm? Or is it maybe a snake? What the heck is this thing and why am I here? Is it the work of the egg or is it just some kind of vision? As there was nothing he could do, he remained more or less calm, but it still bothered him that he had no idea what was happening around himself. Wait, wasn’t it with the egg? Damn, why can’t I remember?

His thoughts were quickly interrupted by the smoke cloud in front of him, which seemed to have finalized its form. It was not something he had previously seen, but it was basically a snake with horns and it emanated a malicious, baleful aura which completely terrified him. The snake stared at him for a few moments and then lunged at him. Although it was quite far away from him, it was upon him in less than a second, however, for some reason it stopped there. Quin was not entirely sure, but the smoke snake appeared to be smiling... No, it’s not a smile, it’s more like a smirk? Then, it vanished in an instant and his surroundings changed as well.

Although he was still in darkness he could see far away lands in the distance and the only thing that did not look extremely small were three distant shapes that emerged above the landscape. As Quin observed them he realized that they were rather similar to the Three Mountains. Could they be the Three Mountains? But then where the heck am I? Wait, there’s something weird about one of them.

The more he looked at it, the stranger the rightmost one was. Is it a hole? How? After some time he discovered that it was not even a mountain but an endless hole in the ground. Then why did I see it as a mountain? Just as he thought of it, the mountain reappeared in the place of the hole. What? Does it change its shape according to what I think? Next, he tried to imagine it as a couple of different things but nothing happened. It only changed again when he focused his mind on seeing what it truly was, just like he did it before. Does this mean that one of the Three Mountains is just a hole in the ground? Can I believe this?

He turned around to look at the other side. There’s nothing there just smoke... No, that’s not true. It’s just more like a piece of paper with a map which had a part of it erased? And what’s that? Far away, but still within his sight, there was a place where the smoke was higher than in its surroundings. He concentrated on it so that maybe he would find out something, but the only thing he discovered was that some part of it was made out of stone. The first thing Quin recalled was the pyramid but it was way bigger even than that as, despite the fact that he was looking at it from far afar, its height was about the half of the highest of the Three Mountains.

Next, he turned a bit around again, to see another part of the world beneath him but just when he caught a glimpse of something that was darker than his surroundings everything disappeared and he was standing in front of the obelisk. If what I saw was real... Maybe Ranfel has a lot more mystery to it than we’ve previously thought? Hm, I think I should definitely check this out!

From where he was, he could not see the Three Mountains as he was surrounded by high trees on all sides thus he decided to climb up the highest looking one.

There it is, now let’s see what’ll happen. Quin watched each mountain for minutes, yet they remained the same. So, was it just a trick or prank? But what would be the meaning behind it? I just can’t understand it at all. It’s clear that there should have existed some kind of civilization that was quite developed in the past, but why would they build something like this? Well, at least that’s the only thing I can imagine, but that still doesn’t explain anything at all, and if they were capable of such things -- which I haven’t even heard about -- then what happened to them? Why would they just disappear off of the face of the earth like this?

Quin stayed at the top of the tree thinking until it became night, but he did not get anywhere and only had even more questions. Having no answers to them, however, he decided to not waste his time anymore on them and just continue his travel back to Hounxi.

It was during the dawn of the tenth day that he finally arrived at Hounxi, and to be honest he was rather tired. However, he did not go straight to his bed -- no matter how much he wanted to do so -- but to the lake, and did the longer version of his usual morning practice. Quin did this to expel any wild energy out of his body that was not of the healing type. Using the other, more corrosive types was something clearly unhealthy, and though there probably would not be any long-term side effects, the earlier his body was rid of something harmful, the better it would be.

After Quin was done with his exercises -- just like usual -- he sat down and meditated. He stayed in the meditative state for longer than usual as he had quite a few things to process. His new strength, the obelisk, the terrifying snake and what he saw in that vision still did not let his mind be at ease.

It was well in the afternoon when he finally went to bed, and by that point he was beyond exhausted. He just collapsed down onto his bed and fell asleep right away.