They emerged into a different corridor — not the one they had entered from. The stones here were darker, almost obsidian, slick with condensation. The air was warmer too, humming with an undercurrent of pressure, like the stillness before a storm.
Selene unrolled a brittle scroll she had tucked into her coat, the ink charred and splattered, as though it had resisted being read. "This isn't just a vault," she muttered, scanning its jagged symbols. "It's a tomb. And it's been opened."
Cael leaned over her shoulder, recognizing the same sigils etched in the parchment that adorned the altar they'd just left. "What was buried here?"
Selene didn't answer right away. Instead, she held the map to the wall and whispered a word that didn't exist in any living tongue. The wall shuddered, revealing the shape of a mural long hidden under soot.
It depicted a figure in robes, faceless, arms outstretched, standing between two worlds — one of light, fragmented and crumbling, the other of void and silence. Beneath the figure's feet, a breach, bleeding darkness into both sides.
"A gatekeeper?" Cael guessed.
Selene shook her head. "A sacrifice."
A long moment passed before either spoke again. Then Cael said, "The voice… it said the wound was the cure. What does that mean?"
Selene looked at him — not with the usual sharp calculation, but something bordering on pity. "Maybe it means we're the infection."
Before Cael could reply, a sudden gust of hot, fetid air swept through the corridor, extinguishing their torchlight.
The shadows didn't just fall — they clung. A voice — not the same one as before, but cracked, human, and full of hatred — whispered from the black.
"You should have left it sealed."
Cael drew his blade. Selene reached for her charm.
From the darkness, footsteps. Ragged. Staggered. Something was coming, and it had once been alive.
But not anymore.