He’d woken in the night feeling strangely restless and anxious. He’d been floating in that place between sleep and wakefulness. He’d fancied that he had heard Willow calling for him, even had a strange sense that she was trapped in a place that was cold and dark and airless. It had felt so real that he’d been propelled from his bed, and he’d taken a taper to start searching the stone fortress in the dark. He had wandered up and down the dark corridors, and stairways that probably hadn’t had a human footprint on them in decades. It was almost dawn when he found the access to the crypts under the sanctuary.
He found a torch in a sconce and pulled it down, igniting it with his candle. Initially the rooms were clear and clean and free from debris, but the further he ventured the more
