He stepped through the mouth of the chamber, and the mountain opened its heart to him.
The core of the place was a cavern that swallowed his grey-sight whole, vaulting up past where even his eyes could follow, and it had no need of them to light itself. The crystal did that.
Where the veins above had run in fat threads, here the mana crystal grew in pillars and sheets and hanging blades taller than houses, the richest seam on the mountain laid bare at once, throwing a cold blue-violet blaze across the dark that pulsed like something with a heartbeat of its own. A whole town had died for a rumor of this. Standing in front of it, he understood the rumor had undersold it.
