No one breathed for several seconds.
The tomb had become too bright and too silent, its silver-veined floor glowing beneath their boots and the twelve moon pillars casting pale light over every face in the chamber. The Council men beyond the barrier shouted, but their voices arrived muffled now, flattened by old magic. One of them beat a fist against the silver wall, then jerked back when light crawled over his glove like frost.
Inside the chamber, the heartbeat came again.
Not from the sarcophagus itself, Sera realized. From beneath it.
Deep under the stone.
As if the village had been built not over a tomb, but over a chest where something immense still remembered how to live.
Valerius’s face changed.
It was subtle, but Sera was watching him too closely not to see it. The color ben
