Soren stayed at the threshold of the room, his weight resting against the raw edge of the doorframe.
The silence down here demanded that kind of pause. It was the weight of people left to rot in the dark, their last breaths still hanging in the stagnant air, thick with old dust and the smell of a tomb that had stayed shut too long.
Then he moved his boots across the stone.
The blue light from his hand slid over the floor, catching the white curves of ribs, the split skulls, and the rotted fringe of wool coats that had gone brittle with age.
It was a mass of things that had once had names, all piled where the walls met the floor.
Near the back of the pit, a tiny glint cut through the cold blue of his magic. It wasn't the dull white of a bone or the grey of a flagstone. It was the sharp, clean sparkle of metal.
Soren walked toward it, stepping long over the remains, his boots finding the narrow spaces where the rock was clear. He didn't want to crush what was left of them.
