The air inside is frigid, your breath misting before you. The corridor opens into a vast, circular chamber. The ceiling is lost in darkness, but the room is illuminated by an eerie, sourceless green light that seems to emanate from the very walls. In the center, on a simple stone pedestal, rests the source of it all.
The Jade Serpent is more magnificent and terrifying than you imagined. It’s the size of a man’s forearm, carved from a single piece of flawless, luminous jade. It’s coiled as if ready to strike, and its eyes are two chips of obsidian that seem to drink the light around them, holding a depth that feels infinite.
But the relic is not unguarded.
Three figures stand between you and the pedestal, their forms shrouded in robes of darkest charcoal. They do not seem to breathe. The air around them shimmers with a palpable cold. As one, they turn. Within their shadowed hoods, their eyes are not human—they are pools of solid, gleaming silver, like liquid mercury, fixed upon you.
The lead figure takes a step forward, its movement unnaturally smooth. When it speaks, its voice is a dry hiss that seems to come from everywhere at once, scratching at the inside of your mind.
“The lock has been sought,” it intones. “The key is found. The Serpent will be ours. The world will be remade in shadow, and we… we shall be its architects.”
The final word echoes in the silent chamber, a promise and a threat rolled into one.