As I crept closer, drawn by curiosity—or maybe it was the dragon’s influence—the backs of the heads of dozens, maybe hundreds, of dark elves came into view. Some were hooded, and some had their hoods back, their white hair tumbling to their shoulders. The dark elves stood chanting as they faced the massive sculpture and dais. Nobody stood on the dais yet, but a vat of a dark liquid gurgled over a fire pit where a pulpit in a church might have been. Was it blood? Whose? On a table next to the vat rested Xervan’s cracked-eggshell artifact and a paintbrush.
The urge to fling myself over the railing to sprint up and snatch it surged into me, and my legs carried me three running steps before I slammed an anchor down on that urge. I planted my hand against the wall, bracing myself before Xervan
