The cavern breathed.
Or at least, it felt that way. The air moved in slow, deliberate rhythms, like the lungs of a colossal beast slumbering beneath the stone. Each exhale stirred the torchlight into uneasy flickers, stretching the shadows of the petrified dead until they writhed across the walls like mournful spirits.
No one dared speak at first. The weight of silence pressed heavier than battle. Even Owen, whose hunger for knowledge often devoured his fear, stood frozen, lips parted, clutching his satchel as though the scraps of parchment within could ward off what loomed before them.
Leo's chest was a forge of agony. The fragment pulsed faster than his own heart, frantic, fevered, desperate. Each throb lanced through his ribs like molten iron, and his breaths grew ragged, uneven. He tried to tear his eyes away from the monolith at the cavern's center, but it was useless. His gaze was shackled. The stone slab pulled at him like a tide, relentless, magnetic. It wanted him.
