It took some moments for his eyes to adjust to the gloom beyond the shattered archway, but when at last they did, Brann felt his heart drop like a stone cast into deep water.

  A breath passed then instinct moved faster than thought. In one smooth motion, he slid the shield from his back and drew the sword from its worn sheath, steel whispering like an oath remembered. The air hung thick, unmoving, a breath held in suspense, but his skin tingled, and the hairs on his neck prickled as he felt an unseen danger.

  He turned swiftly scanning the jungle behind; it all looked the same as before, nothing stood out. The tangled green yawned back at him like a dream half-remembered, hiding more than it revealed.

  He turned again facing the inside of the tower...there was the room from the dream.

  No question lingered it was not likeness or imitation it was the room, he knew it in the marrow of his bones. He could see more of it now, not like in the dream were the mist obscured it, now it was clear, vivid.

  Stone walls, glistening with damp, a cold wind whispering across frost-slick floors and at the room’s end, a long black table of polished basalt. Time had laid its hand heavy upon the chamber, but the memory had not faded.

  The hooded figure still sat at the table, though it no longer breathed. The candle beside had melted into a squat waxen lump, pale and useless, the great book lay open its pages mottled and swollen, eaten through by mold and rain. A stink of rot and damp parchment rose into his nostrils.

  A muscle in his cheek twitched and the fear in his belly twisted, sharp and sudden.

  This was the place of his nightmare. He stepped inside, slow and quiet, the tap of his boots echoing lightly across the stone, as though the walls themselves were listening, the hooded figure did not move.

  Of course it didn’t, time had already taken him...The bones still sat where the man had once been, spine straight, hands resting on the table’s surface yet the head had rolled to the side, fallen and come to rest against the floor. A white skull stared up at the rafters, mouth frozen open in a scream that no longer held voice.

  Brann stood over it, blade in hand, and the breath caught in his throat, almost like he was expecting it to come back to life.

  This was the one from the dream...

  The speaker of riddles.

  He lowered his gaze to the corpse’s hand, to his surprise it was bare. Not a single band adorned those skeletal fingers no silver, no iron, no gold, no gleam of gemstone or glint of soul-bound steel.

  Had the dream deceived him?

  Or had someone already been here?

  His grip on the sword tightened, he could still hear the voice, clear as starlight, echoing in the back of his mind:

  “You are but a piece…”

  That voice, so powerful, so terrible and now the body lay before him, unmoving. Not fallen in battle there were no wounds, no broken bones, no sign of struggle, not a blade, not even a mark of resistance.

  He had not fought.

  He had been ended.

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  Brann’s knuckles whitened on the sword hilt, the jungle was no longer the true terror here, something else had walked these ruins, something that could end a being like this without even breaking the silence.

  He swallowed hard knowing that something was still out there. He had felt it for a long time now but chose to ignore his instinct…

  He was not ready for such a battle, not yet.

  The air within the chamber shifted, it pressed against his skin like wet cloth, like breath on the nape of his neck.

  And still… the silence remained.

  Brann let his eyes sweep the rest of the room.

  It was smaller than it had seemed in the dream, smaller than any memory allowed. The kind of space built more for function than comfort, and long abandoned by both. A narrow bed stood in the right-hand corner, its frame warped with damp and rot, the mattress nothing more than a collapsed husk spilling straw across the stone. The table, with its grim occupant still slumped across its edge, stood to the left, shadowed by the broken wall above. But it was the center of the room that caught his eye.

  A stone slab, square and thick as a butcher’s block, in its center, a rusted iron handle.

  He stepped toward it slowly, each footfall ringing faintly. A door, he thought. Not one that led out, but one that led down.

  Down, into what?

  He did not know and yet the question pressed against his spine like a blade.

  He turned, casting one last look to the world outside. The jungle, coiled in mist, still waited beyond the shattered archway, nothing but the hush of leaves and the hush of waiting.

  Undisturbed.

  With a breath, he turned his back to it. The stone beneath him was cold, his hands, blistered and stiff, wrapped around the handle. Muscles long past fatigue answered his will only slowly, his strength had been sapped by days without proper food, his limbs hollowed out, his body light as if it might drift away with the wind.

  But still, he moved it.

  The slab groaned and dust spilled. Beneath, darkness yawned like the mouth of some sleeping beast, a spiral staircase descended into it, carved straight into the stone, slick with moss and time.

  Brann stared down into the black.

  No light.

  No sound.

  Only depth.

  He hesitated, only a fool would step blindly into such a place. He remembered the hooded man had once used a candle and that meant there might be more.

  He returned to the table and with a grunt, he pushed the corpse aside. The bones resisted with a brittle creak, the body slumping with a dull sound that echoed too loud in the still room. Beneath the table, nearly swallowed by shadow, he found something: a small wooden cabinet, black with mildew but still intact.

  He pried it open with his fingers.

  Inside were a handful of old, crumbling pages, a plain dagger with a wooden hilt, and three stubby candles, yellowed and soft.

  The dagger he left...The candles he took, the pages too, some things burned better than others.

  He worked quickly, setting one candle aside he held a wad of the paper in his hand, then knelt. He drew sword and shield once more, and with slow, steady movements, struck the steel edge to the metal rim of the shield. Once. Twice. Sparks flew on the third.

  On the fifth strike, the paper hissed and curled as it came to life. He held it carefully beneath the candle’s blackened wick and soon, a small but steady flame flickered in the gloom.

  Light, at last.

  He tucked a second sheet of paper into his coat, just in case, and held the candle aloft. Its glow cast long shadows on the walls, dancing like silent watchers. With the flame in one hand and his sword in the other, he stepped to the stair and began his descent.

  One step, then another, the spiral swallowed him.

  Down, into the dark still silence.