The silence in the chamber wasn't empty.
That was the first thing Lin Yue understood, standing at the threshold with Gu Yanchen's eyes still fixed on him like he'd never once looked away in however long he'd been waiting. The silence had weight. It pressed against his eardrums the way deep water pressed against a diver's chest, and somewhere underneath it, so faint he might have imagined it, there was a sound like breathing.
Not his. Not Gu Yanchen's.
The room's.
"You're not surprised," Gu Yanchen said. His voice carried easily across the impossible distance between them, though the chamber should have swallowed it. "Most of them scream, you know. When they reach the top."
"I haven't seen anything worth screaming at yet." Lin Yue stepped further inside, and his footsteps made no sound at all, just like the stairs. "Give it time."
