The last passage did not slope. It dropped.
A long stair of black stone fell away into the dark, each step worn smooth, and the murmur of the dead rose to meet them as they descended, no longer a chant but a wail, layered a thousand voices deep.
The eleven armor-glows lit the walls as they went down, amber and crimson and gold and shadow sliding across carved faces that seemed to turn and follow.
And then the stair ended, and the deepest chamber of the Subterranean Rhapsody of the Dead opened before them.
It was vast beyond anything above it, a cavern the size of a buried city, its ceiling lost in black so high no light found it.
Bone-pale pillars marched away in every direction, and between them drifted the dead in their thousands, faint grey shapes wheeling slow through the dark like fish in a deep sea.
But none of that held their eyes.
