The archway fell behind Soren, leaving him within the skeletal remains of what had once been a staggering monument to a forgotten age.
Even swallowed by two centuries of aggressive vines and the dark, patient creep of Solmiran moss, the sheer scale of the outer courtyard refused to be hidden.
It was a space of colossal proportions, now populated only by the broken remnants of a grand processional path.
Statues lined the way, their stone bodies now mostly torsos cut off at the waist by the violence of collapse or the cold intent of deliberate destruction.
Time and neglect had claimed their hands and worn the features from their faces, leaving only a few partially intact visages to stare blankly into the afternoon light.
Where the figures themselves had fallen, the pedestals remained, their inscriptions still legible in the old Solmiran tongue.
