Liam stared at the old hag, the firelight trembling across her shriveled face as the weight of her words lingered in the air like a fog of ghosts.
He took a slow step forward, the torch in his hand casting long shadows on the wall. "Then tell me," he said coldly, but not without a touch of dread, "the traps… the treasures we saw—the ancient defenses, the passageways, the illusions… why? Who built them?"
The hag lifted her head slightly, eyes gleaming with something unreadable. "Not I," she rasped. "I may be the soul that haunts these walls, but it was the last survivors of this palace… the ones who fled after the blood soaked every corridor… the ones who knew what had happened here. They built those traps. They hid those treasures. To keep people out."
Her voice grew bitter again. "To keep tomb-raiders, treasure hunters, and glory-thirsty explorers from digging too deep and awakening what was buried."
