The click came again, closer this time, and Rama put himself between Sekar and the stairway before the second sound had finished echoing off wet stone.
"Torches up," Pramono said quietly, and the soldiers behind him obeyed without argument, throwing hard yellow light down into the passage far enough to catch the first suggestion of movement. Something shifted against the far wall of the lower chamber, too large to be a person, too deliberate in its motion to be rockfall settling after years of neglect.
Ki Branggah had gone very still beside a crate of half finished devices, one hand resting on the strap of his bag as though he meant to run and had not yet decided which direction offered any safety at all. "Rama," he said, low and urgent. "Whatever that is, it heard us. It has been listening since we came down the first stairway, and it only moved once we got close enough to the second one to matter."
