The voice faded down the shaft, leaving a bell tone ringing faintly in the stairwell above them. Nobody on the landing spoke, so Juna sniffed twice and slipped down the very first flight alone.
"Hot air, burnt fat, a river that smells like an angry kitchen," she reported over her shoulder, "and there's a drumbeat under my feet."
"Drumbeat?" Hajin asked, falling in behind her.
"Hammers, Idiot, hundreds of them, all keeping time."
"I've seen a hundred dungeons, kid, not one of them had a foreman," Vella murmured.
Ferra rubbed her thumb along the rail, "Only godly hands temper slag like this, whoever built it was no human."
"It smells like toast that gave up," Loccy murmured, her ears twitching.
The passage opened after forty steps into a cavern so vast that the far wall vanished in orange haze. A staircase wide as a street plunged down its middle, built from cooled slag in grey and ember scales.
