The room had been dark for four hundred years. And the first thing the light showed was that it had been built for exactly this moment. Nothing about it was an accident.
The walls were not stone the way normal walls were stone. There was something under the surface, something that had been sleeping, and it woke up the second the twins crossed the threshold. Not a crack, not a groan. Just a slow, steady pulse. Like a heartbeat that had been held in for a very long time and was finally allowed to beat again.
Lyra stopped walking.
Caelum stopped two steps after her.
Neither of them said anything. They didn't need to. The marks on their wrists had started to glow, not the soft almost-there glow they did when they were near each other, but a full, clear light, steady and certain. And the marks on the walls answered.
