The door creaked shut behind him, but the traveller was too preoccupied by the sudden change in surroundings. When the door clicked he turned back afraid it would melt into the ground, or burst into flame, but it stood where it should have been, unchanged, expectant of his return.
He was disturbed by the great columns of jade and emerald to his left and right. Great towering spires of stone with intricate pictographs depicting wars, hunts, offerings, and sacrifice ran around and centered on a great many rooted, many branched tree in the middle block of each column. With leaves the size of men exploding from the earth in a greedy grasp for sunlight which shined down generously in great waves of fortune and happy people going about their lives. Those happiest, best dressed in green leaf, and wisest were those under the shade of the great tree, or who drank after it in the winding rivers carved into the rockfaces.
They held bundles of coin, armfuls of grain, and had ridiculous grins on their face no matter what grizzly task they performed in the name of their patron.
This tree must've been central to their beliefs, their very lives.
But as the procession of glyphs progressed down the corridor, they told a tale of great cataclysm, fire from the sky, twisted beasts from cracks in the earth, a great stone buried in the land, and a black, devilish wind from the crater that poisoned anything it touched (you could tell it was poison because the happy people near it held their throats and had closed eyes with their bloated tongues sticking out, it reminded the traveller of a child's stick-drawing for a mother or teacher).
The tree's leaves were waining, thinning, and the rivers grew more narrow, prosperity was turning to desolation. There was no more wavey grass, no armfuls of wheat, no ludicrous grins, or babies in each arm.
The happy people were stricken, plagued, pox-marked, withering, starving, as were the great branches of the tree, now too heavy for the body to sustain, drooping, weeping, pawing morosely at the dying earth at its roots.
A few more steps and the wanderer discovered a column with only one glyph carved upon it.
It was not a happy one.
In the great wound in the earth, a single, powerful, clenched fist emerged, surrounding it was the same poison, desert wind, and the barren emptiness it had brought.
There were hundreds of columns to follow along the path, none bore a single glyph, word, or warning after this one.
Down the blank corridor the traveller continued, he thought of the great hall of doors locked doors he had just emerged from, thought of them all leading to some place as meaninglessly meaningful as this one... and remembered the scar of the world, and the victorious fist that burst from it.
There were a great many legends of a starfall in this land. How magic had came to us, and birthed many wonderous things never before seen, and the elements and man warred over this treasure. People gathered in worship, built cities and towers around, coveting its secrets and tiny droplets of power it granted them for their devotion.
And how this place was lost, destroyed, or hidden under suspicion of great bloodloss, and mischief. Most, assuming for the best.
This place shouldn't be here, isn't here...
The hall of doors had led him here, him, specifically, here specifically, for a reason.
He was sure now.
This peculiar tower was not the site of the mythic starfall...
Many places had claimed that heritage, that auspicious meld of arcane holiness and mischevious divinity- but the traveller felt something missing, something empty in this place, something gnawing at the back of his mind like a freshly forgotten dream or an assuredly overlooked necessity left off the list for market.
Then it dawned on him.
He would know where the star had fallen, he would be able to feel it, feel the pull, the power, the promises of pious profanities. Secrets that held the truths and madness of the creators in one place, in the hands of mortals... he would know that place, and its temptations.
This place held old, haggard magic. It was the only thing that held this place up, and it would not hold for many more years.