Arin and Thoren moved away from the gathered crowd, putting a fair distance between themselves and the mass of awakeners assembled before the ancient gate.
"So," Arin said at last, his voice lowered to a solemn murmur, "you're saying you saw a blood sacrifice inside the palace?"
Thoren nodded slowly.
His expression was grim, the usual calm in his eyes clouded by a faint, lingering heaviness.
"Not only that. The human stone statues have awakened. They're no longer inert. They're killing every human still inside the city."
For a brief moment, Arin found himself unable to respond.
Since entering the ancient city, he had felt it, a constant sense of wrongness clinging to his skin like damp fog.
The silence, the ruins, the eerie preservation of structures that should have long since collapsed… none of it sat right with him.
Yet among all those unsettling details, the lifelike human stone statues had left the deepest impression.
Too lifelike.
Too real.
