Silence

 Golden light spilled through the cracks in the old stone ceiling, illuminating a crumbling alter. Lines of silver raced across it's surface in bizarre patterns, forming animals and plants made of knots and curls. All around it stood pillars of dark quartz run through with veins of white and gold. The walls were heavy with vines and moss, hints of murals once bright and beautiful peeking through. Long empty, the temple stood as a monument to times past. Magic had long since abandoned the land and taken with it the places of worship that once stood tall and proud. This temple alone still stood, the cataclysm that tore magic from the land missing it. It's priests and priestesses protected it to their last breaths and hid it from mortals.

For thousands of years no living thing set foot inside the holy place. Eventually magic passed from the memory of mortals and into legend. Time passed and it became part of life to believe that magic was nothing but something imagined by people long ago, something to use as a scapegoat or to explain great deeds. And so time moved on.

Vines wormed through hairline cracks in the building, because nothing keeps earth out, and plants will thrive where magic once lay. Cracks became gaping holes that allowed light inside but still wildlife shunned the building, as buried under rock and dirt as it was. The doorway that once stood open was covered in rock and vines.

There was a crack, a spray of crumbling dirt, and a body tumbles through the weakened ceiling. For the first time in centuries the silence of the temple is broken by a human voice. And with the silence broken so is the seal that kept the residual magic in. And that one human voice heralds the beginning of dark times for the mortal realm.

“Hello?”