Her life had been dedicated to the Locked Tomb, and what was interred within had commanded her whole attention since she understood what it was: the comatose corpse that lay in state amid the tatters of the Ninth House. She’d been taught to love the Emperor, who ten thousand years ago had given them all release from a death that none of them had deserved, and to view the Tomb as symbol of his victory and his demise. Her mother and father feared what lay consigned to that locked-up grave. Her tedious great-aunts worshipped it, but in desperation, as though their collective awe might flatter it into sparing God. They had never wanted to open the doors and look upon it. Those doors had opened for the body to be brought in, and they would only open again for the body to come out, in some doom yet to come.

Harrow was forbidden entry in the same way she was forbidden from going up to the top tier of the drillshaft and taking a hammer to the oxygen-sealant machines. It would be the end.

Most of her life was spent in silence; there were many moments when she found living—difficult. Tedious. On the worst days, fatuous. Memory now recalled what had happened very bloodlessly, and the details were unimportant. One very bad day—when it seemed as though everyone hated her, and as though this were a completely correct way to feel—with bloodied fists and a bruised heart, she wrote a note explaining her suicide then went and unlocked the door. Unexpectedly, this did not kill her; and what did not kill her made her curious.

She was much older before she could cross the threshold. It was trapped like all hell. But the traps were Ninth traps, made of bone and grinning skeleton, and she’d been using them herself since she was toddling. In the end, the experience was merely educational. She crossed the cave, which was trapped, and passed the central moat of black water—which was deep, and trapped—and then climbed the island (trapped) to the frozen mausoleum (ridiculously trapped), and when she got there—alive—she could look into the open-faced coffin where lay the reason for her existence.