Location from Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence
The remnants of our civilization — overgrown bunkers, crumbling highways, and radioactive craters that the Hundred Kingdoms call 'ancient' without realizing they're only a thousand years old.
Builder ruins are scattered throughout the Hundred Kingdoms — remnants of pre-apocalyptic civilization (our civilization) that the feudal inhabitants treat as ancient mysteries. They contain technology that looks like magic: functioning lights, data terminals connected to the data-space, weapons that defy medieval understanding. The ruins are where Jorg learns the truth about his world. Fexler Brews exists in them. Builder weapons can be found in them. The data-space connects through them. They are the Broken Empire's greatest secret hiding in plain sight — a thousand years of history reduced to overgrown ruins that nobody understands. The dramatic irony is devastating: every reader recognizes a highway, a bunker, a power plant. The characters see only 'Builder magic.'
Concrete, steel, and glass — materials the Hundred Kingdoms can't produce — weathered by a millennium but still recognizable to anyone from our era. Highways half-buried in earth. Bunkers covered in vegetation. Cities reduced to rubble but with foundations too massive to disappear entirely. Radiation zones glow faintly in places. The ruins are alien to the inhabitants and achingly familiar to the reader.
Also known as: Builder Sites, Ancient Ruins