The ruins waited at the edge of the forest like a skeleton picked clean by time. Crumbled columns leaned drunkenly under moonlight. Broken altars cracked open to the sky. Vines strangled marble like jealous lovers. The air smelled of wet stone, moss, and something older—decay mixed with faint sulfur, as if hell itself had exhaled here long ago. A low stone archway stood in the center, its keystone carved with symbols no living tongue could pronounce. Beneath it: a faint red glow pulsed, not from any fire, but from somewhere deeper, hungrier.