Chapter 13: Fingers in the dark - 3
The ruin had been a tomb of silence.
No birds stirred, no wind whispered, the air so still even the insects held their tongues as Lira stepped beneath the moss-draped archway marking the vault’s entrance.
The forest around it seemed to watch, its broken trees leaning inward, their roots clawing at half-buried stones.
It took two days to find—two sleepless nights threading through tangled paths, navigating traps carved into the earth, not triggered by heat or weight but by intent.
Lira cloaked her mind, dulled her thoughts, slowed her heartbeat to a murmur, moving as a shadow’s ghost.
In the vault’s deepest chamber, she found the shard—nestled in a cracked ceremonial basin, shrouded in dry moss, hidden behind a stone slab.
Her dagger’s tip eased it free, her gloved fingers never grazing its surface.
It pulsed once in her hand, not with light or heat, but with a shiver of recognition, as if it knew her.
She wrapped it in leather, her breath held, her eyes averted, and climbed out, the vault’s weight pressing at her back.