The door to the vault gave a faint groan as Ian stepped through, the lingering silence behind him consumed by the closing stone.
Dust shifted in the half-light, faint shafts of it drifting through broken architecture and faint soul flame residue.
Ian adjusted his coat, calm as ever, and gave one last look over his shoulder.
No creatures mov3d. No whispering horrors. No twitching malformed corpses crawling from the walls.
Not even a flicker of those twisted, foul-born demons that had infested the Reach's lower levels.
Odd.
He walked forward, his boots crunching grit underfoot, the echo of his steps bouncing off fractured walls and silent pillars.
The place—this portion of the Reach—was strangely vacant.
And that, more than anything, disturbed him.
It was quiet. Too quiet.
But more than the unnatural stillness, it was the absence that gnawed at his mind. No creatures of the Reach.
No twisted souls or crawling beast-forms.
And most telling of all—no demons.
