The chains moaned like shifting bones, their sound rolling through the cavern in endless echoes. It was not merely noise, it was weight. Each groan pressed against their ears, against their ribs, until even the act of breathing felt wrong, intrusive, as though their lungs stole air that did not belong to them. Every shuffle of boot against stone, every flicker of cloth, rang too loud in the vast chamber.
No one dared to speak at first.
The torch flames wavered, halos of trembling orange that pushed back against the vast dark. Their light spilled across the black monolith at the cavern's heart. The door loomed like a cliff of shadow, its edges soft, its surface not entirely stone. The longer one stared, the more it seemed to ripple faintly, like water disturbed by an unseen current. Not rock, not metal, not memory, but some impossible state between.
