The ghost of Kael's warning clung to us like a shroud as we stood before the threshold of our enemy's power. The chaotic, vibrant pulse of the outer Serpent's Coil faded behind us, swallowed by a profound and unnerving silence. Before us lay the Serpent's Heart, and it was nothing like the sprawling, desperate marketplace we had just navigated.
There was no grand gate, no army of brutish guards. The entrance was a simple, unadorned archway carved from the living rock, flanked by two flickering braziers that cast long, dancing shadows. The flames within burned a strange, chemical green, and the smoke they produced carried not the scent of wood or coal, but the cloying, sweet aroma of a rare, hallucinogenic incense. It was a silent, subtle declaration of power: this was a place of luxury, of secrets, a world apart from the squalor of the city below.
This was not a fortress to be sieged; it was a court to be infiltrated.
