"Lower your blades," Rekh'Naar's voice said, from somewhere past the gap in the door, flat and unhurried and entirely unbothered by the fact that four weapons had come up in the same instant his first word finished leaving him. "I would rather not walk out of a four-hundred-year seal only to be met by a soldier who mistook me for what actually cracked it."
Malrik lowered his sword first, more out of surprise than obedience, and the rest of us followed a beat behind him, and the pale light in the gap resolved, a moment later, into Rekh'Naar's own ember eyes catching the torchlight from the far side of the door he had no visible way of having opened.
Clarissa's hand hadn't left the hilt at her hip. "You have some explaining to do, First. That door does not answer to visitors. It does not answer to me, and I hold the keys my own predecessors were given for it."
