The walls began to whisper. Not in sound, but in shape.
As the scouting party pressed deeper, torches licked across rough stone that had been etched from floor to ceiling. These weren't murals of kings or crowns, but frantic, sprawling depictions, an entire history bleeding itself raw into the rock.
The first stretch showed the same half-dragon figures they had seen before, proud and tall, wings outstretched, cities rising around them. But the further south they marched, the less whole the figures became.
Tails severed. Wings mangled. Horns twisted back into skulls. By the third hall, the walls swarmed with imagery of scales peeling like rotten bark, of claws breaking into shards, of jaws unhinging until faces split apart entirely.
And always, always, the serpent spiral devouring itself hovered above them, watching.
The humans muttered, their voices brittle with unease. "Cursed things." "It's watching." "Burn this place."
