She'd walked right into it because the pay was good, and she'd thought she was clever.
Gareth would've smacked the back of her head for missing the signs. "There's no such thing as an easy score, girl. Just traps you haven't spotted yet."
Her lamp revealed a circular chamber stretching upward into darkness, the domed ceiling lost beyond the light's reach. The floor beneath her boots was so smooth she almost slipped.
And there, in the exact center of the room, sat a chest.
Even from across the chamber, she could tell it didn't belong to this place. Where the stonework spoke of ages long dead and buried, the chest looked maintained. Cared for. Fresh footprints in the dust around it. Recent visitors, multiple sets, all leading to and from that single point.
Whatever was in that chest, someone valued it enough to keep returning.
Why?
Voices echoed down the stairwell outside. Multiple people. Moving fast, not bothering with stealth now that the door was sealed.
She crossed to the chest. If she was trapped, if this was all a setup, she needed to know what she'd been set up for.
The chest was dark wood, bound with silver, its surface covered in symbols that matched the walls. Five keyholes were arranged around a central mechanism. The most sophisticated lock she'd ever seen.
And it was already open. Lid raised just enough to show darkness within.
Her jaw clenched. Of course it was open.
The voices grew louder outside, words becoming clearer.
"—been down here long enough. Move faster, you idiots."
No time to think, no time to plan. She lifted the lid.
Twelve tools lay nestled in black silk. Dark metal that seemed to drink her lamplight, edges that shifted when she tried to focus on them. Each one was engraved with words:
Ward-singer. Soul-binder. Death-reader.
Names that meant nothing and everything.
She reached for what looked like a delicate pick, fingers closing around cold metal.
The world shifted.
Heat flooded up her arm, shocking in its intensity. The tool recognized her. She could feel it responding to her touch, humming with a frequency that resonated in her bones.
She gasped and nearly dropped it, but the tool wouldn't let her. It had warmed to match her skin, fitting her grip like it had been made for her hand.
Whispers filled the chamber. The echo of voices speaking in a language that felt familiar, even though she couldn't understand it. They came from the tools themselves, and they sounded... welcoming?
What are you?
The shadows around her lamp deepened, stretching toward her fingers like they were curious. Like they recognized something in her they'd been waiting for.
She grabbed a second tool, shaped like a key but with edges that refused to stay still. That same warmth spread through her hand.
Boots thundered on the stairs outside.
She couldn't make sense of it. Couldn't understand what was happening. She shoved both tools into the hidden pockets of her vest, the warmth pressing against her ribs like a second heartbeat.
Whatever these things were, she wasn't leaving them for whoever had set this trap. If someone wanted them badly enough to lure a thief down here, they were valuable. And if they were valuable, she could use them. Figure out what they were, sell them if possible, or at least bargain for her life with them.
Assuming they didn’t kill her first.
