They emerged back into the narrow shaft, but the air had changed. Heavier. Every breath scraped against their lungs, as if the chamber below had altered something more than memory. Leon took the lead, one hand brushing the wall for balance as they climbed the spiral.
Mira kept her wardstone close. Its surface flickered—not steady, but reactive. Tomas glanced behind every few steps, knife still in hand, jaw clenched.
"The light's wrong," Mira muttered.
Leon didn't answer.
At the top, the obsidian petals of the platform had sealed shut once more. No sign of the descent. No trace of the man. Just stone, flat and cold.
They crossed it in silence, stepping back into the crater. The mist had thinned. The wind had not returned. And the creature that once watched from the broken tower was gone.
Tomas broke the stillness. "Where do we go now?"
Leon pointed east. A new path had revealed itself—the far archway no longer crumbled, but intact, stone swept clean by something recent.
