Round 95

The chamber was a tomb, though no bodies lay within its walls—at least, none that still wore flesh. The air hung heavy with the stench of decay and old magic, thick enough to taste. Dust motes danced in the torchlight, caught in lazy spirals that seemed to defy the laws of physics.

Halie stood frozen at the threshold, her crossbow held ready but trembling slightly in her hands. "Seraphine," she hissed, barely audible even to herself, "what is this place?"

The elven woman moved with fluid grace despite the tension in her shoulders, circling to flank Halie while keeping her eyes fixed on the chamber's depths. "A tomb of sorts," she replied, voice low and measured. "But not for the dead. For something else entirely." Her fingers traced one of the pulsing sigils carved into the stone—a star-shaped vortex that seemed to suck in the very light around it.* "These bindings... they're not meant to contain death. They're meant to imprison power."

And then the sound came—the dry rasp of bone on stone, the scrape of something long-dead stirring. Halie's finger tightened on the trigger as a figure emerged from the shadows, its skeletal form adorned with tattered remnants of clothing that once might have been fine robes.