The ruin didn't give him a warning this time. The insects broke their lazy circles in midair and scattered as if a hand had brushed them away.
The sound they made was thin but sharp, a pitch that cut through the damp quiet of the courtyard. His boots felt it before his ears did.
A faint tremor ran through the stone, not enough to throw him, but enough to whisper a message into the bones of his heels.
He turned his head, eyes flicking left, then up, and he caught it—the courtyard wall bulging outward, swelling like a throat taking breath.
The stone split, sounding like teeth grinding. Moss tore free in green strips, falling like wet cloth.
From a crack that had not existed a heartbeat ago, an armored shape began to uncoil. Snake, but not the small kind you kill with a hoe and a moment of luck.
This was the old kind, the story kind. A body layered in plates that had grown thick where a blade was expected to be thin.
