Izel found her a bit later and shown her to a passage. The passage behind the altar was not a corridor. It was a seam in the stone—a vertical c***k barely wider than her shoulders. The air inside tasted of minerals, old water, something sharper underneath. The fine hairs on Mariana's forearms lifted before she had taken three steps.
Izel moved ahead without hesitation. The hem of her white robe dragged through a thin film of moisture on the floor. The ritual scars on the old priestess's arms caught the green light bleeding from the walls. For a moment, Mariana saw them not as scarification but as a map—a record of something carved into flesh the way the prophecy had been carved into stone. She made a note of it. She was good at cataloguing details.
"How far does this go?" she asked.
"As
