Coins clinked and chains rattled as Sonder's hands swept through the mound of treasure.
Every handful of dull silver and bent iron reminded her that none of this belonged to her. It had once belonged to the House of Lustre, and then, in a way, to the dark creature.
She wondered if this could be considered stealing.
Her fingers lingered on a cracked bronze cup.
She wasn't here to rob it, but what else could it look like?
It didn't seem to truly understand the value people would place on the glittering things in its trove.
She paused for a moment, breathing in the damp, metallic air.
But then another thought pressed in. The House of Lustre had been abandoned long ago.
Whoever had owned these things originally had left them.
The creature had not used them. It had only carried them down here, burying them where they couldn't shine.
She pushed aside her hesitation; this wasn't stealing, it was recovering.
Her hands closed on something smooth again. She drew it up: another sphere, pearly and cool against her palm. A second tear.
Soon, she found a third, wedged between two broken goblets. She held all three close for a moment, awed by the hum of power that shivered against her skin.
Three must be enough, she thought. She did not even know how many existed.
She wanted to leave in haste, yet something in the hoard tugged at her.
Not like the tears, soft and steady, but sharper. Harsher.
Almost reluctantly, she kept searching, gold, silver, and pearls spilling through her fingers.
She pulled back her hands as something pricked her finger and drew a drop of her thick, black blood.
And then she found it.
Not a sphere. Not silver or glass.
It was a shard of something black. Small, no bigger than her thumb, no more than a splinter broken from something larger.
Behind her, the shadow creature stirred uneasily. Its amorphous shape wavered, then drew back, shrinking from the shard as though afraid to touch it.
The creature felt something Sonder couldn't: a wickedness seeping from it, bitter and foul, however small.
Sonder turned it over in her fingers. The light of the gifted sword at her side dimmed in response, as if wary of the thing she held.
It should have disgusted her. She should have cast it aside.
But she didn't.
The pull was too strong. The shard had a familiarity to it.
She clenched her fist around it, feeling the weight of its wrongness settle into her bones.
It felt important somehow. Not now, but maybe in the future.