The stairs ended.
Not dramatically. Not with a great stone door carved with warnings in a dead language, or a barrier of ancient magic that shimmered and tested my worthiness. Just... ended. In a corridor. With a door.
A very ordinary door.
Oak. Iron bands. A lock that any competent thief could have picked before breakfast. The kind of door you'd find on a wine cellar or a particularly paranoid pantry.
I stared at it.
Malphas stood behind me, close enough that I could feel the wrongness of him pressing against my back like a second skin. He hadn't said a word since we'd passed the third sub-basement, where the walls had shifted from worked stone to something rougher, older, and the torches had given way to my own conjured light.
"This is it," I said flatly.
"It would appear so."
"No wards. No guardians. No dramatic inscription about how those who enter shall forfeet their souls or whatever."
"The inscription may have been omitted for budgetary reasons."
