Mike Winters pushed open the heavy wooden door of the recruitment office and stepped inside. He had three ways into the Evergreen ruins mapped, two ways out, and zero people willing to follow him through any of them. The treasure waited, buried deep in the forbidden wilds, but a solo run meant no rope to pull him back if he fell. He scanned the wanted posters tacked to the frame, hunting for a name desperate enough to say yes. A clerk slid a thin ledger across the counter and shook his head. Every name on the list had already turned Mike down, crossed off in faded ink. He stared at the last empty line, then signed his own name beside a single word: alone. The door swung shut behind him. He would walk into the wilds with no one watching his back.

Mike reached the ruins by dusk and found the first sealed door waiting in the clearing. Moss filled every groove of its carved symbols. The arch loomed twice his height, packed with script he could not read. He dropped his pack and pulled out the birch cipher key he had traded three months of wages for. He held it up to the inscriptions. The symbols on the key did not match. Not one. He turned it over, tried again, and felt the cold truth settle in his chest. He could pick a lock. He could swing a blade. He could not read this. Mike circled the door, hunting for a seam he could pry. Near the base, half-hidden under a flat stone, he found a weathered notebook. Pressed leaves marked its pages. Ink sketches showed this exact arch, the symbols copied out in neat rows, with small translations scratched beside them. The mud on the cover was still soft. Someone else was here. Someone who could read what he could not. Mike closed the notebook, tucked it under his arm, and turned toward the tree line to find them.