The deep caves beneath the palace were his world. Here, in the labyrinth of stalactites and eternal silence, Niaru was not a ghost of the past, but simply himself. The air smelled of stone and of time frozen millennia ago.

It was this age-old peace that was broken by a new scent. Faint, barely perceptible—a trail of blood, sweat, and... something chemically clean, unfamiliar. The instinct honed by survival made him freeze, then move soundlessly toward it.

She lay in a narrow passage, as if fallen from some crevice above. Not a goblin or a troglodyte—a mortal. The first thing he saw was the strange footwear. Not leather or fabric, but some resilient, ribbed material; the sole—a complex pattern unlike anything in his memory.

His gloved hand carefully brushed a strand of hair from her face. Pale skin, shallow breath. And then his gaze fell on the clothing.

This was not a brocade dress or a linen shirt. The material was dark, elastic, form-fitting, yet without a single seam in the familiar sense. A zipper—the thinnest imaginable, with a tiny tooth, working silently. Velcro fasteners on a peculiar vest, its fabric repelling water and dust. All of it spoke of technologies far removed from the forge and the loom.

Niaru slowly straightened up. His eyes, accustomed to the gloom, narrowed. In his memory, the humans above were primitive beings in coarse garments. This... this detail disproved everything. It spoke of civilization. Of progress. Of a world that had moved far ahead while he buried his dead and survived in stone.

A quiet rage, cold and sharp, pricked him. He was imprisoned not only in these caves, but in his own ignorance. While he guarded the secrets of the past, the present was creating its own—from synthetic fabrics and polymers.

He bent down and, without particular tenderness but also without cruelty, lifted the mortal into his arms. She was lighter than she seemed. Her strange clothing rustled in an unfamiliar way.

"So, mortal," he whispered, heading deeper into his domain, to where the magical light of crystals glowed. "You have brought with you more than just your life. You have brought news of a world that has forgotten us. And you will tell me everything."

He laid her on the stone slab that served as his bed and took a step back, crossing his arms. His beautiful face, inherited from his forgotten mother, was inscrutable. But a new fire burned in his eyes—not of memory, but of curiosity. The hunt for truth had gained a new objective. Not only what had been, but what is. And this living artifact from the new world was his key.