Pharai
The mountain did not fall in silence. It roared like a dying god.
The moment the unadorned gold mask crumbled under my fingertips into glittering, metallic dust—exposing that hollow, starlit void and the single golden feather pinned down by black glass—the ancient cavern floor split down its middle. The narrow, silt-covered stone ledge beneath my heavy boots groaned, snapped, and dropped straight down toward the boiling pool of crimson decay.
I screamed, my arms flailing as I slipped on the wet rock. Steam scalding hot and smelling of burnt copper and ancient rot leaped up in a wave to swallow me whole.
"Got you!"
