<Far below the castle of Tenebraclaustrum.>
The lowest depths of the castle's extensive oubliette stank of the grave. No screams echoed here, only the quiet hiss of mold reclaiming stone, only the wet drip of condensation from the decaying stone, and the cloying sweetness of decay, ever present. The air was fetid: life had not walked these halls in years, and even death seemed to have gone still.
Du moved from one rusted cell door to the next, careful not to disturb the heaps of bones and rags that marked the last inhabitants. Each chamber was the same: a husk, a coffin with no lid. No guards posted here. What was the point?.. This was the final destination, The Drop.
But then, a glint of green. The torchlight caught a shimmer beyond the bars of a cell. Then, the green glint something moved, chains clank. A figure, slight and low to the ground, raised a frail hand to shield her eyes, wincing at the light that stung.
The cell was unlike the others. Chains clung to the wall, iron corroded and fused with the stone, bound tight to delicate wrists and ankles. Fungi bloomed in textured carpets up the side wall. Pale yellow, grey-green, some glowing ghostly white. And in a neat corner, a black rat curled sleeping.
The woman had made a nest of rot.
She lowered her hand. Her voice, when it came, was hoarse but carried on breath. "It has b-been... s-some while since t-torchlight t-touched these stones..." she whispered with a nervous stutter. "What h-have you l-lost, to come s-searching here?"
