[Third POV – General]
The place was not meant to be found.
It lay far beyond the outer estates of Caedryn's holdings, past lands that no map marked correctly, buried beneath layers of stone and old magic that had been shaped long before Solcarth learned how to build palaces. It was not a dungeon in the way mortals understood dungeons. There were no banners, no corridors meant for guards, no halls meant for ceremony.
It was a containment sanctum.
The structure descended rather than spread, carved downward into the bedrock as if the world itself had been hollowed out with deliberate care. Stone walls pressed close, not crude or jagged but smooth, polished by enchantments rather than tools. The air was heavy, thick with a pressure that made breathing feel deliberate, as if every inhale required permission.
Light existed here only because it was allowed.
