The final ascent was a grueling, lung-burning struggle against gravity and thinning air, but as the mountain path finally surrendered to the summit, the vista that greeted them was nothing short of a nightmare. The ritual site sat upon the plateau like a festering, ancient wound carved into the very flesh of the mountain.
A massive, prehistoric circle of obsidian black stone lay etched into the rock, its grooves pulsing with a rhythmic, sickening violet light.
Inside that jagged perimeter, the true horror was revealed. A thousand souls, shackled in heavy, soul-draining iron, were sprawled across the stone.
They were alive, barely. They were a sea of broken bodies, their eyes vacant, their breathing shallow and ragged.
It was one thing to hear of the scale of Corvus's cruelty; it was a visceral, stomach-churning thing to see the sweat, the grime, and the trembling limbs of a thousand living sacrifices waiting to be extinguished.
