The others do make their way up to the weathered stone slab, climbing the final steps in silence, each drawn forward by the view.
Tasya reaches the top first, her breaths shallow from the climb. She turns in a slow circle, eyes wide, taking in the panoramic sprawl of jungle and temple below. "It’s... beautiful," she murmurs, and then—with a sigh that carries both wonder and fatigue—she sinks cross-legged onto the platform, shoulders finally relaxing. Mischa follows wordlessly, dropping beside her with the calm of someone preparing for the next fight but grateful for the pause.
Jin strides forward to stand beside Regan and Admiral, squinting at the crumbling temple framed in mist and vine. "Quite the stage, huh?" he says, his voice low but laced with curiosity. "I wonder what the Makai once performed here... ceremonies, sacrifices... or something we’ve no word for anymore." There’s no sarcasm this time—only a flicker of reverence.
Taresh arrives next, quiet and composed, eyes scanning the stonework beneath their feet and the obelisks that lead here. "This place," he says evenly, "was built with purpose. With honor. The kind that does not fade, even when the people who carved it are long gone."
Cordey climbs up next, slower, but with the gravity of someone returning to sacred ground rather than discovering it. He stops just short of the edge, eyes fixed on the temple. His hand drifts to the amulet at his chest. "In this place," he says, voice low, "I can hear the whispers of the Old Ones... and of Lelay. Their voices travel on the stone." He lifts the amulet, letting it hang from his fingers as the wind stirs it. "There’s something within that temple. Locked behind rites and silence. A vault gifted to the Makai by the fey—to arm them against the infernal ones. And only one who carries a Sea Shaman’s Charm can open it."
