(Location: Obsidian Palace)
The chamber had never seen proper light.
Not once. Not in all the years it had existed beneath the earth, carved out of cold stone and silence and the kind of dark that had texture to it, that pressed against skin like something alive.
The torches along the walls burned low and orange and threw more shadow than light, and the shadows sat in the corners like they had been invited there and had decided to stay permanently.
A woman hung from the far wall.
Chains at her wrists. Her head dropped forward, her hair falling loose around a face that was hard to look at directly. Not because it was ugly. Because of what had been done to it.
She had been beautiful once. You could still see the shape of it underneath everything that had been taken from her, the way you could still see the outline of a building after fire had moved through it.
