Step, pause. Step, pause. Breathe.
At the bottom they come not to a room but a cave, one so large that the candle has no hope of illuminating the far walls. There is a span of dry ground some ten feet deep and twenty across; a span of rock and sand, gently sloping downward. Waters lap at its edge, black as oil.
There are rituals to be followed here too, yet Andra has no heart for meditation or prayer, and Sayenne has not the strength. Instead, Andra lowers Sayenne to the gritty ground, roots the candle to an outcropping of stone with a drip of its own wax, and finishes the preparations.
A thick wool blanket upon the ground; another laid out as a waiting towel. An ancient book drawn from a chest hidden in the stairs’ lee, flipped open to the most recent page—a page filled with her own sl
