As the chamber returned to silence Khalin spat out the necrotic dust from his mouth and shook his beard. The eyes within the floor were no longer moving, but the shattered remains of corpses and skeletons made the footing treacherous.

‘Everyone alright?’ the dwarf asked, fairly sure of the answer, before kicking aside a whole rib-cage to retrieve his torch from the doorway to the chamber.

The alcove slowly came into view as Khalin moved forwards, the torchlight reaching around the walls and softly illuminating the small room beyond. It only went back a couple of dozen feet but the dwarf had to move all the way to the entrance to spill the light into the corners.

Black shapes loomed out of the side walls and Khalin drew back for a moment, raising his hammer, until he realised with relief that the shapes were little more than cloaks, hung up, a little dusty and spotted with small cobwebs.

The rest of the area appeared to be harmless — a wooden table butted up against the far wall seemed to be the only other furniture, its top covered with jars and pots arranged neatly and orderly.

Zero pointed towards one of the glass jars as the group followed Khalin into the room, the rogue’s stomach growling loudly. ‘Pickled onions!’ he rasped, licking his lips. ‘I’m starving.’

‘And when aren’t you?’ enquired Tradden as the young fighter went across to inspect the cloaks. Khalin joined him, feeling the cloaks, and noticing that each of them appeared to be accompanied by a two-foot long black silk scarf on their peg.

‘I’m not sure that they are…’ Kireth began, before trailing off, as Zero picked up the jar of onions and tried to determine how the stopper worked. The mage smiled to himself as he reviewed the contents of the table.

With the sounds of Zero groaning as he tried to relieve the jar of its stopper in his ears, Kireth began to methodically catalogue the items upon the table and make some sense of their purpose. He already had a fair idea — some of the jars were made of a rough stone and calling Beltak over the half-elf asked the scribe if the contents were dried-out healing salves. Beltak seemed to be nodding in agreement.

A few of the other jars were more curious, containing blades, many sickle-shaped and ornate. The blades were small, not meant to be weapons. Perhaps to be more precise, small cuts, on a delicate subject matter…

There was a shatter of glass from behind the mage and a yelp of disgust from the rogue. Everyone turned in an instant, weapons drawing by instinct, to be greeted by the sight of several small orbs rolling across the stone floor from the remnants of the broken glass.

One of the orbs rolled up to Kireth’s foot, its pupil staring up at the mage from within a brilliant blue iris, well preserved by its former home.

Zero began gagging. ‘I was nearly going to eat one of those!’ he spat, suddering to himself.

‘It probably wouldn’t do you much harm,’ replied the mage calmly. The eye continued to look up at Kireth, daring him.

The mage’s boot came down and there was a soft squelch. ‘I believe I have enough information from within here,’ he said as he strode off to the east.

Tradden grinned at Khalin despite the aches and pains that coursed through his body. ‘What do you make of these cloaks?’ he asked. ‘They don’t look that old to me, a bit dusty and mouldy, perhaps, but it’s not as though they’re ancient or anything.’

Khalin stroked his beard softly. ‘Aye, lad. They haven’t been touched for a few months, I guess, but they’re not old. That main door was locked and trapped, too. I’m not sure anything has been in here for a few months by the look of it.’

‘Except us,’ remarked the young fighter. Khalin looked the lad up and down for a moment. ‘Aye, except us,’ he uttered and turned to follow Kireth to the other side of the chamber.

The others slowly filed in after the mage, Tradden with a cloak and scarf in one hand, Zero still with a grimace on his face and trying to get an imaginary taste out of his mouth.

Beltak smiled a little as he came into the room. ‘Reminds me of home,’ the scribe said, sitting down at one of the desks. ‘I used to have to spend hours practising at desks just like these back in Deepingwald. Copying the scriptures. Pelor help you if you made a mistake and ruined a parchment before you were finished,’ he chuckled wryly.

‘But no scriptures right here,’ offered Kireth, then turned to look at the doors to the south.

A stony cold silence greeted Zero.

There was a grating click from the door as the rogue stood back. It didn’t open, but Zero looked pleased with himself. ‘That one will open now,’ he said pointedly, indicating that he might not be the one that would be opening it.

Appearing fairly confident, Zero stepped back for a second, before choosing another of his tools, jamming it into the lock.

There was another grate from the door and the rogue stepped back a few paces to admire his work. He only realised then that the others had been deathly silent, watching him work, whilst he had been humming a tune all along. It almost seemed embarrasing.

‘Both open,‘ he coughed, trying to regain some sense of dignity. ‘I just, er, need to pack my tools away. I‘m sure someone else could oblige.’ he finished, waving his hand towards the doors.

The door swung open silently revealing a small square room within, barely a dozen feet across. A thin film of dust rose into the air as the draught from the chamber of eyes spilled into the room, swirling around for a moment before starting to slowly settle once more upon the three large stone chests that dominated the centre of the room.

The chests appeared to be carved out of the stonework of the floor, but had neither the grace nor the workmanship of the carvings upon the door. They appeared plain at first, but as Khalin slowly entered the room he could make out notches in the stonework, as though someone had been using the outside of the chests to count.

To his relief the rogue did not spot any false floor traps, nor did any spears suddenly project themselves from the walls.

Despite his suspicions there didn’t appear to be any traps lurking within the stone.

Even in the dim light — Khalin’s and Tradden’s torchlight throwing his own shadow over the contents of the chest — Zero could make out the glitter of gold.

He reached in his hand to take hold of one of the coins, and then snapped it back as though something had bitten him.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Khalin, stepping forward with his craghammer ready.

Zero hissed back at him, waving him away without even looking and reached in to take the coin once more, lifting it up to the light of Khalin’s torch. The coin’s golden lustre shone in the dim room, and despite the smooth edges which belied its age the coin seemed fresh and new.

Towards the rogue was the now-familiar insignia of a double-headed eagle, the design reminiscient of silver coins they had seen before and more unnervingly similar to Zero’s uncle’s signet ring that Kireth now held.

‘Heads,’ said Zero softly, rubbing the eagle with his thumb. He seemed reluctant to turn the coin over in his hand, then seemed to make a decision, throwing it over his shoulder towards the group with a practiced flourish.

‘Tails,’ he called as the coin struck the floor, rolling towards the group and finally settling at Tradden’s feet.

The young fighter looked down with the others at the coin, his hand reaching out for it and plucking it from the floor, his face intent with study before he recognised the markings face-up on the coin.

‘A spiral,’ he muttered. ‘Like the necklaces, like the shape of the trees on the map surrounding the “Mouth of the Sleeper”, like the faux-stars in the dome above.’

The purse was of exquisite make, lined with sleek fur, also black, and carefully stitched. Pulling apart a thin drawstring the warlord unearthed its content. Within were a number of pearls, beautifully rounded and shining with an inner colour. There appeared to be a dozen in total, all of roughly the same size.

The same pearls greeted the dwarf as he peered into each purse — most smaller than in the first purse, but all arranged in a uniform size for each bag.

The lid swung upwards easily and at first Khalin thought the chest was empty. However, as he peered over the edge he saw two further black silk purses at the bottom. The pair were larger than the second chest, perhaps the size of a larger buckler, and heavier in weight than the others.

Picking one up he drew back the string and took a look at the contents inside. He drew out a long chain of gold, somewhat like a necklace but did not appear to be particularly ornamental. The torus links of the chain were a little too dull and a little too uniform to be described as a thing of beauty.

He pulled out another chain, and another. Some were connected in a circle as the first — though connected via a torus link, not through any clasp or ribbon — others appeared broken, different lengths and just in a straight line.

The second purse had a dozen more of the chains in a similar state.

Leaving the room and rounding the statue, the dwarf paused before the other door, frowing at the carving of the bald humanoid breaking the chain. The work was rough and not as skilled as the first, much as the penultimate panel in the dome above.

After a couple of strokes of his beard in thought, he hefted his craghammer, adjusted his hold on his torch behind the safety of his shield, and slowly pushed the door open.

The flickering light revealed another small chamber, similar in size to its neighbour, but this one appeared much more cramped, the walls lines with shelves upon which were stacked reams of parchment, neatly laid out and bound.

Before Khalin could move the torch further into the room, Kireth grabbed his arm, holding the flame back.

‘A clumsy move could destroy everything in there,’ he hissed.

Kireth paused at the doorway for a moment, examining the room with his keen eyes. ‘Shirak!’ he murmured softly and a soft glow rose from the end of his staff, illuminating the chamber with enough light to see, but not too much to damage any ancient parchment.

Shelves had been hastily erected within the chamber and not too long ago, judging by the haphazard heights and the angles they were fastened to the walls. A sweeping cloud of dust had begun to rise, motes captured in the wizard’s witchlight swaying across the room.

‘I do not think there has been anybody in here for a number of months,’ Kireth explained calmly. ‘Much like the area you are all stood in.’ He moved towards one of the shelves. ‘Intriguing,’ he continued, more to himself than the others.

There were literally thousands of parchments stacked upon the shelves. Many were stacked as quires, two dozen sheets tied together with a coarse black ribbon. Others were in larger reams held together by a wrap of black cotton.

The parchments did not seem to be ordered in any way, quires and reams intermingling on the shelves, so Kireth approached the closest of the bundles, softly tugging at the ribbon to loose its contents. Pulling back the top sheet to look at the contents he frowned, before looking at the next page, and then the next in quick succession.

He drew one of the parchments out and turned back towards the door, thrusting the paper under Zero’s nose. ‘Your favourite story,’ Kireth intoned. ‘It looks as though they — whoever ‘they’ are — were industriously writing libelles for some purpose.’

Zero took the parchment from Kireth’s bony grasp and saw the all too familiar stanza that made him shudder every time.

‘“Light must be snuffed, perfection decayed, order dissolved, and minds fragmented.”’ he croaked out loud. ‘But there’s more… “The very threads of existence must be torn asunder, then burned, then the ashes scattered, until all is nothing and no one exists to remember existence.”’

The rogue took a gulp of air.

‘And then there’s some smaller writing. “Channel power to the Chained God, so he can break his chains. Retrieve lost relics and shrines to the Chained God. Pursue the obliteration of the world, in anticipation of the Chained God’s liberation.” And then there’s one of those spirals at the bottom. Joy.’

He looked back at Kireth with a distraught face. ‘And they are all the same?’ he enquired.

‘It appears to be so,’ replied the mage.

Zero quickly darted into the room bearing the relief of the humanoid holding a coin and plucked what he could from the stone chests within. Deciding on a single purse of pearls, and a bag of the strange gold links, he stuffed them into his backpack and then joined the others in the room with the stone eyes.

Khalin led the way out of the chamber, carefully stepping over the rounded stone eyes on the floor. The others plodded on behind wearily, Tradden with a long lingering look behind him at the place that might have served as a place to rest.

It only took a few moments to wander up the corridor and bear right towards the bridges, where Khalin paused to review the scene.

Their torches once again lit up the cavernous area as best they could, fading into flickering shadows in the alcoves and drops below. The turnstile in the centre of the pit seemed to be in the same position as before which reassured the dwarf, the blades still stuck in their positions. From the alcoves, just about visible at the fringes of the torchlight, the statues still stood motionless.

‘Wait!’ came the muffled cry form Beltak, who had made it to the turnstile at the centre of the western blade bridge.

But it was too late.

There was a grumbling click as the door swung open, as something in the hinge seemed to give way. With a clatter behind them the double doors to the north also grated open and similar sounds from the other blade bridge echoed around the chamber. As the echoes died down there was a brief spell of silence, allowing the group to spot a dusty stone sarchophagus in the small chamber beyond the door.

Before they could move, however, a tremendous clatter of distant chains and a thudding boom from somewhere below shook dust from the ceiling. Behind them, the blades began to turn of their own accord, drawing a yelp from Beltak. Within the crypt in front of the others, the sarcophagus exploded as something rose into the open air!