The chamber remained frozen in that terrible silence after Silas spoke.
"The truth," he had said, "is that the prison was never meant to hold a monster."
He looked at the crystal.
"It was meant to hold an answer."
Ren did not blink.
Pax, standing a little behind him now with his shoulders rigid and his expression hard enough to cut glass, said nothing at all for once, which in itself was alarming. Fang could feel the tension in the chamber tightening by the second, not just around them, but through the walls, through the runes, through the whole old structure as though the room itself had heard the archivist's words and decided it disliked them.
From above came another faint sound of movement.
Then a restrained voice, male and young, called down again, "Archivist Silas? We are coming down."
Silas did not look away from the crystal.
"Too late," he murmured.
Ren's gaze flicked towards the stairwell and then back to Silas. "Who is coming?"
