There’s dust in the air, dust the color of smoke, covering the smooth grey stone floor on which my claws click with each step. Piled up flakes of it cover everything, a lonely condiment spread across each and every surface of the room; from the practical wooden beams in the ceiling to the termite-chewed dark wooden table in the center of the room and its four chairs, which surround it like hatchlings crowd their mother. Piled high in the far corner are crates, stacked up to conserve space. An old tarp, at one time maybe white but now dulled to a greyish sort of color, lies half-spread upon them like a threadbare blanket draped over a skeleton dead of the cold. The House has its fair share of those, to be sure; skeletons. own kin, and the tiniest bit of Rhévos himself, they say; all of them still here. They are buried side-by-side, just past the lips of the yawning alcoves which line every one of the black metal walls in the mountain. I dare not witness their bones.

  ;;fortunately, We do not share that problem. 

We see him enter the room, before his mind becomes aware he has done so. We see his eyes search the chamber, his clothes gently blowing in what little wind finds its way past the slight opening in the heavy steel doors of the House. We see his lips curl, and within his mouth his fangs begin to bare. We see his breath come faster, imperceptibly so, as nerves begin to build in his limbs. We see his eyes find the table and chairs and the crates stacked high in the corner, worn and rotting, fit not even for a termite’s meal; we see the slightest expression of disgust flicker across his lips as he does. We see him turn his eyes to the wall, to the alcoves he so fears and the bones that tales taller than the sky have warned him of. We see the temptation in his eyes, to pull back the curtain and look upon the dead, upon his ancestors.

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  ;;but he does not.

We see him turn toward the hallway, long and dark and twisting, that yawns before him; the only way forward, the only way through. We see his eyes try and try to adjust, and when they do—

  ;;he sees Us.

In the room there is a table, surrounded by chairs; an idol to which its supplicants pray. In the corner there are boxes covered not entirely by a tarp, colored a dull grey, shot through with holes and covered with the same dust that lies atop the entire room. In the alcoves lining the walls there are curtains hiding shelves, upon them row after row of bones. And in the hallway ahead stands a Song, tall and wrapped in shadows, His voice a beating of drums. A single note, played forever and forever. He looks on, into the room, watching the Draicyrí who stands at its center.

He sees, and waits, until the Draicyrí sees too.