It just stopped. As if whoever had made it had grown tired of their endless labors and unceremoniously called an end to an aeon of labors. Then—guiltily—created a set of doors fitting to mark the labors of generations past.

The doors were over a hundred feet tall. Never had Cara seen anything like them. Skyscrapers, yes, of course! Grand edifices. Old castles that were shorter than you actually imagined them to be.

Movies.

This, though. Cara’s neck craned back. Her parched lips parted, and she felt a shiver run down her spine.

A thrill unlike she had ever felt before staring at mere…architecture.

This was unreal. It was a giant door, sealed across the center. A door of stone, yet a wall in truth. But she could see where it had once been made to open and close; clever stone hinges against the wall, possibly meant to only open once. Be closed forevermore.

What made her dizzy was the scale. What made Cara shake was the sense of wrongness. It was a door, but made for giants. Made by giants?

This, more than anything, told her she was in another world. The door was not just a single slab of stone cut in the middle, either. It was decorated with old reliefs, which even Dalius and Cara’s lights could not fully illuminate. But that wasn’t what drew the eye.

The magic did. Someone had drawn a constellation across the doors. Shimmering motes of light connected by lines of glowing force. Power incarnate; not like neon lights, but something with a far less harsh, artificial glow.

Colors that flowed along the spectrum of white, with subtleties of others mixed in—but some Cara had never seen before. She had seen blue, but the flickering strand of light that created the door’s seal? That was a color not of Earth.

Magic.

Magic. The doors rose upwards, works of art hewn from stone. They were giant, rounded. Deep etchings portrayed reliefs. Words, symbols, and even a vast image across both. Perhaps a map of Noelictus, or a story of how the tomb had come to be?

Whatever it was was lost. Ser Dalius did not know. Nor did the ghost stare. He was still chatting.

“You can see the stone’s worn away here and here. The enchanting magic keeps it together. Some powerful seal. The Tomb has always had barriers, but the mice? The fading walls? This was not here when I was alive.”

He hesitated, glancing around.

“It has faded much since I…since I awoke. And see—the quality of the tomb is lesser. Weak magics coming undone.”

He pointed with an annoyed gesture at the walls around the mighty doors. They had lost the magic protecting the tomb in places. Cara saw roots poking through and places where the stone had fallen in as dirt collapsed the shoddier architecture.