He wakes up freezing cold, lying on a hard surface in the dark, and his first thought is that he is having a nightmare - but Korovai is one of those people who can always tell whether or not he is dreaming as soon as he thinks to ask himself the question. So, as nightmarish as this is, it definitely isn't a dream.

How comforting.

The air gradually warms; the unrelenting gloom gradually lifts. He is in some kind of vast empty chamber in the shape of a nine-pointed star, sourcelessly lit with a dim grey light, the spacious floor and distant ceiling and numerous walls all made of a dim grey stone. The scale is frankly intimidating, even to someone who grew up in the Godscrest Mountains.

He wakes up freezing cold, lying on a hard surface in the dark, and his first thought is that he is having a nightmare - but Korovai is one of those people who can always tell whether or not he is dreaming as soon as he thinks to ask himself the question. So, as nightmarish as this is, it definitely isn't a dream.

How comforting.

The air gradually warms; the unrelenting gloom gradually lifts. He is in some kind of vast empty chamber in the shape of a nine-pointed star, sourcelessly lit with a dim grey light, the spacious floor and distant ceiling and numerous walls all made of a dim grey stone. The scale is frankly intimidating, even to someone who grew up in the Godscrest Mountains.

It's very quiet. Quieter than his wing of the palace, and that's saying something. If he holds perfectly still, the only movement he can detect in the vicinity is his own heartbeat.

He gets to his feet and walks to the oddly shaped dais in the middle of the floor. A nine-pointed star inside another nine-pointed star, and so on, each star forming another level until - is that nine steps up, yes of course it is - a final nine-sided polygon sits at the very centre. When he looks up, there is a lightless black void above him that echoes the nine-pointed star shape. He freezes in place at the sight of it - so utterly, utterly dark, a kind of dark he's never seen before, the kind of dark he imagines you'd get if a Light mage stole all the light out of your eyes. Is it a skylight, a hole in the ceiling, or just a star-shaped piece of some kind of elemental darkness? He certainly can't tell from down here. Well, whatever it is, he's not going to—

He wakes up freezing cold, lying on a hard surface in the dark, and his first thought is that he is having a nightmare - but Korovai is one of those people who can always tell whether or not he is dreaming as soon as he thinks to ask himself the question. So, as nightmarish as this is, it definitely isn't a dream.

How comforting.

The air gradually warms; the unrelenting gloom gradually lifts. He is in some kind of vast empty chamber in the shape of a nine-pointed star, sourcelessly lit with a dim grey light, the spacious floor and distant ceiling and numerous walls all made of a dim grey stone. The scale is frankly intimidating, even to someone who grew up in the Godscrest Mountains.

It's very quiet. Quieter than his wing of the palace, and that's saying something. If he holds perfectly still, the only movement he can detect in the vicinity is his own heartbeat.

He gets to his feet and walks to the oddly shaped dais in the middle of the floor. A nine-pointed star inside another nine-pointed star, and so on, each star forming another level until - is that nine steps up, yes of course it is - a final nine-sided polygon sits at the very centre. When he looks up, there is a lightless black void above him that echoes the nine-pointed star shape. He freezes in place at the sight of it - so utterly, utterly dark, a kind of dark he's never seen before, the kind of dark he imagines you'd get if a Light mage stole all the light out of your eyes. Is it a skylight, a hole in the ceiling, or just a star-shaped piece of some kind of elemental darkness? He certainly can't tell from down here. Well, whatever it is, he's not going to get any use out of staring at it, so he might as well—

He wakes up freezing cold, lying on a hard surface in the dark, and his first thought is that he is having a nightmare - but Korovai is one of those people who can always tell whether or not he is dreaming as soon as he thinks to ask himself the question. So, as nightmarish as this is, it definitely isn't a dream.

How comforting.

The air gradually warms; the unrelenting gloom gradually lifts. He is in some kind of vast empty chamber in the shape of a nine-pointed star, sourcelessly lit with a dim grey light, the spacious floor and distant ceiling and numerous walls all made of a dim grey stone. The scale is frankly intimidating, even to someone who grew up in the Godscrest Mountains.

It's very quiet. Quieter than his wing of the palace, and that's saying something. If he holds perfectly still, the only movement he can detect in the vicinity is his own heartbeat.

He gets to his feet and walks to the oddly shaped dais in the middle of the floor. A nine-pointed star inside another nine-pointed star, and so on, each star forming another level until - is that nine steps up, yes of course it is - a final nine-sided polygon sits at the very centre. When he looks up, there is a lightless black void above him that echoes the nine-pointed star shape, surrounded by nine additional diamond-shaped petals. He freezes in place at the sight of it - so utterly, utterly dark, a kind of dark he's never seen before, the kind of dark he imagines you'd get if a Light mage stole all the light out of your eyes. Is it an arrangement of skylights, of ordinary holes in the ceiling, or pieces of some kind of elemental darkness? He certainly can't tell from down here. Well, whatever it is, he's not going to get any use out of staring at it, so he might as well—

He wakes up freezing cold, lying on a hard surface in the dark, and his first thought is that he is having a nightmare - but Korovai is one of those people who can always tell whether or not he is dreaming as soon as he thinks to ask himself the question. So, as nightmarish as this is, it definitely isn't a dream.

How comforting.

The air gradually warms; the unrelenting gloom gradually lifts. He is in some kind of vast empty chamber in the shape of a nine-pointed star, sourcelessly lit with a dim grey light, the spacious floor and distant ceiling and numerous walls all made of a dim grey stone. The scale is frankly intimidating, even to someone who grew up in the Godscrest Mountains.

It's very quiet. Quieter than his wing of the palace, and that's saying something. If he holds perfectly still, the only movement he can detect in the vicinity is his own heartbeat.

He gets to his feet and walks to the oddly shaped dais in the middle of the floor. A nine-pointed star inside another nine-pointed star, and so on, each star forming another level until - is that nine steps up, yes of course it is - a final nine-sided polygon sits at the very centre. When he looks up, there is a lightless black void above him that echoes the nine-pointed star shape, surrounded by nine additional diamond-shaped petals. He freezes in place at the sight of it - so utterly, utterly dark, a kind of dark he's never seen before, the kind of dark he imagines you'd get if a Light mage stole all the light out of your eyes. Is it an arrangement of skylights, of ordinary holes in the ceiling, or pieces of some kind of elemental darkness? He certainly can't tell from down here. Well, whatever it is, he's not going to get any use out of staring at it, so he might as well—

He wakes up freezing cold, lying on a hard surface in the dark, and his first thought is that he is having a nightmare - but Korovai is one of those people who can always tell whether or not he is dreaming as soon as he thinks to ask himself the question. So, as nightmarish as this is, it definitely isn't a dream.

How comforting.

The air gradually warms; the unrelenting gloom gradually lifts. He is in some kind of vast empty chamber in the shape of a nine-pointed star, sourcelessly lit with a dim grey light, the spacious floor and distant ceiling and numerous walls all made of a dim grey stone. The scale is frankly intimidating, even to someone who grew up in the Godscrest Mountains.

It's very quiet. Quieter than his wing of the palace, and that's saying something. If he holds perfectly still, the only movement he can detect in the vicinity is his own heartbeat.

He gets to his feet and walks to the oddly shaped dais in the middle of the floor. A nine-pointed star inside another nine-pointed star, and so on, each star forming another level until - is that nine steps up, yes of course it is - a final nine-sided polygon sits at the very centre. When he looks up, there is a lightless black void above him that echoes the nine-pointed star shape, surrounded by nine additional diamond-shaped petals. He freezes in place at the sight of it - so utterly, utterly dark, a kind of dark he's never seen before, the kind of dark he imagines you'd get if a Light mage stole all the light out of your eyes. Is it an arrangement of skylights, of ordinary holes in the ceiling, or pieces of some kind of elemental darkness? He certainly can't tell from down here. Well, whatever it is, he's not going to get any use out of staring at it, so he might as well—