The chains weren't necessary. That was the first thought that crossed your mind as the carriage lurched to a halt. The silk bindings around your wrists were purely ceremonial, soft as a lover's whisper, and yet they'd rubbed your skin raw during the endless journey through the mountain pass. A practical bind would have been kinder.

Through the carriage's only window, you'd watched Vaeloria disappear behind the Blackthorn Mountains—first the spires of the capital, then the farmlands, then finally the smoke from a thousand hearth fires. You'd kept watching until there was nothing left but ash-colored peaks and the rattling of wheels on ancient stone.

The escort priests had stopped speaking to you after the second day. Perhaps they thought it was easier that way. Perhaps they simply didn't know what to say to a woman being delivered to a monster.

Hands—rough, impersonal, trembling slightly—pulled you from the carriage. The air hit you first: cold and wrong, carrying a scent like old blood and burning copper. Before you stretched a fortress that shouldn't exist, black stone fused together without mortar, towers rising at angles that made your eyes ache. This was the Dwellers' Citadel, and its gates were already opening.

Ten feet from the entrance, the guards stopped. They would go no further.

The words were rehearsed, hollow. The guards were already backing toward the carriage, not taking their eyes off the citadel. The priests were reciting something, but the wind tore the words away. Then the gates groaned, and they fled—all of them—leaving you alone at the threshold.

The courtyard beyond was vast and shrouded in shifting shadow. Torches burned with green flame, illuminating shapes that moved at the edges of your vision. You heard breathing. Many creatures breathing. And then, from somewhere deep within the fortress, a sound like the earth itself was laughing.

That voice. It came from the walls. From the shadows. From everywhere at once. Then another voice answered from the darkness ahead—deeper, older, and infinitely more terrible.

The shadows at the far end of the courtyard moved. Something enormous was approaching. The torches guttered as it passed, bending away as though even fire feared to touch him. Four glowing amber eyes—no, two eyes, but they burned so bright they seemed to multiply—fixed on you with an expression you couldn't read.

He stopped before you, close enough that you could smell the ash and old blood on his armor. His serpentine tail dragged across the stone behind him, and his mouth—that impossible, too-wide mouth—curved into something that might have been a smile.