If something big tried to pivot there, it would slide.
Lastly, she walked back to the entrance and carved several extra marks into the trunks there, deeper than before.
If she had to run, her future self might thank her for the clearer signs.
She stood there for a moment, hand resting against the cool crystal, and shut her eyes.
"Let my mistakes be small," she murmured in Kharadorn dialect. "Let my blades be quick."
No thunder answered. No booming divine voice promised victory.
Good.
She always distrusted anything that offered certainty.
Rhaen picked up her sword properly again, checked the straps of her bracers, and stepped over the first etched groove.
The air changed.
It was subtle at first – a pressure against her skin, a faint tightening in her ears like when riding down a high mountain path into a valley.
Then the shallow depression in the center of the room stirred.
Stone ground against stone as something beneath it shifted.
Rhaen slowed, but she did not stop.
