The air in the secret room felt heavier than the smoke from the burning fireplace of the house. Eron stood by the doorway, fists clenched so tight his nails dug into his palms. The old man sat hunched on his creaking chair, working a whetstone over the edge of a chipped axe as if nothing was wrong.
But Eron had seen. He had smelled the truth before he had reached that cursed place. The smell of the dead. The smell of the corpses.
That stench from the rotting flesh didn't just vanish from your mind after you'd walked past it. And the trail of blood—old, dried, black—leading outside the room thanks to his shoes getting bloodstained had been more than enough to make him throw up.
Eron took a deep breath, trying to keep his voice level and stable. But it didn't work, how could it when that man did something like this.
"You want to tell me," he began, each word a stone thrown at still water, "why there are bodies in the room?"
