The door opened with a grunt that didn't echo, like it should have.
The corridor ahead was long—arched with hard-lined stone, lined in dust so thick it muted their footsteps entirely. No torches. No lantern hooks. Just a faint blue illumination from crystals embedded along the ceiling—each barely flickering.
Serai stopped the moment she stepped across the door.
"What is this place?" she whispered.
Neither of them answered.
Auren had never been here.
He didn't need to be told that.
Everything about this place felt... wrong. The scent—earthy, sterile, and something like singed silk. It smelled like mourning left to rot. The walls were wide enough to accomodate numerous tapestries, but none were left. Just deep-set hooks. Dozens. Hundreds. A few were twisted. Others melted.
They moved in silence.
Wazir led. Serai followed, still stiff-legged from the prison.
Auren came last.
And paused.
He pressed one hand to the wall—meant only to steady himself. The stone was cool. Rough. But there was something beneath it.
A vibration. Or memory. Or both.
And then—something opened.
Not the wall. Not the corridor.
Something inside his hand.
Auren inhaled sharply. His breath caught.
Emotion surged like heat up his wrist and then cooled down into his ribs. It wasn't his. It was ancient. Buried. Grief, Cries that never got to finish turning into silence. Raw, suffocating, and hungry.
He pulled his hand away, almost immediately.
Behind him, one of the hooks twisted with a faint metallic creak.
Serai turned. Her face was pale now.
"You felt that too, didn't you?" she said.
Auren nodded.
She didn't ask what it was. She didn't want to know.
Halfway down the hallway, the ceiling light faded and then pulsed once, almost mirroring Auren's heartbeat.
And that's when it started.
Not sound. Not sight.
Reflection.
Auren turned his head—just slightly. And for a second, just outside the corner of his left eye, he saw his own shoulder moving.
Except he wasn't moving.
His reflection—wasn't in a mirror.
It was in the air.
A flicker. Just once. And gone.
They passed a collapsed arch. On the other side: a round chamber, likely a ceremonial gallery. An altar lay shattered at its center, with rust-colored stains trailing outward in perfect radial lines.
Serai stepped inside and stopped breathing.
So did Auren.
Because ahead, on the far wall, where a fresco had once been carved—
There were three silhouettes.
Like figures pressed into the stone itself.
Their backs were turned.
One had a sword. One knelt. The third...
Was identical to Auren.
Not in posture. In presence.
He could feel it tugging at something inside him. Not like a thread being pulled—but like a memory that had waited too long to be noticed.
He took a single step forward.
The stone trembled.
The silhouette didn't move in any way the eye could catch—yet something about it shifted, like the idea of it had turned to face him.
A flicker. A gesture. A hint of motion that shouldn't be possible in stone.
And then—
A handprint appeared beside it on the wall.
Fresh.
Smeared in dust.
Auren backed away.
Behind him, the Wazir said nothing.
He simply reached out and closed the door to the chamber.
Soft. Final.
They kept walking.
But none of them talked.
And none of them looked behind them again.