1.8.5 - Devotion

You drew lots in the inscription hall, split into pairs, and the temple took you in two directions.

The rule carved into the wall left nothing to argue with. Enter as pairs, or do not enter. So you drew lots. Gunnar and Riven went one way, Hantz and Brawn the other, and the far arch sent each pair somewhere it could not follow. As Gunnar and Riven crossed the threshold a silver cord found them, alive and patient, and bound them wrist to wrist. It did not intend to let go.

It earned its keep almost at once. Their first trial was a flooded chamber, cold grey water moving in a slow current, a line of stones that tipped underfoot. Riven went straight in, meaning to wedge a slab steady, and the water closed over his head. He held the stone level from beneath while Gunnar picked his way across the top. Then Gunnar tried to cheat the last of it with his mirror, blinking ahead through the air, and the cord took offence. Every time he flickered free it came awake, slithered after him, and wrapped him up again with a squeeze that drove the breath out of him. They reached the far door soaked and joined and quietly bullied by a rope.

On the other side of the temple, Hantz and Brawn found a wide hall of identical tiles beneath a canopy of carved branches. Brawn learned the floor lied the fast way. A tile gave under his weight and dropped him through it. But from the walkway above, Hantz could see what the floor hid. The safe tiles caught the light differently from up there, a pattern invisible from below. He called the route down one step at a time, and Brawn walked it on faith.

Then the dark took Gunnar and Riven. Not dimness. The kind of dark that kills a torch at the threshold and gives nothing back. They felt out the first of its puzzles by voice alone, each trusting a partner he could not see. Two pairs, two roads, and the temple asking the same question in every room.

Remember For Next Time

• The pairs: Gunnar and Riven on one road, Hantz and Brawn on the other.
• The cord: a living silver rope binds Gunnar and Riven. It will not let them part, and it bites when Gunnar tries to blink away from it.
• The temple's rule: every room is built for two. Nothing in here can be done alone.

Where We Are

Deep in Freya's temple beneath the Hollow Coin, split into two pairs, each working through its own trials, with two nights left before midnight.