Dark wood. Iron banding. Age without deterioration. A lock that Flinn clocked from across the room as complex but manageable, the kind of complexity that was a genuine puzzle rather than theatrical difficulty.
Cresty's [Alert] activated before she'd fully registered the chest was there.
"Don't," she said.
Everyone looked at her.
"The reading isn't standard danger." She was still looking at the chest, parsing the signal her skill was producing. "It's adjacent. Structured differently than anything the skill has flagged before — not threat, something that becomes threat under specific conditions." She looked at the party. "Don't touch it."
"It's a Mimic," said Lexel.
"Probably," said Cresty. "Don't touch it."
"Definitely don't touch it," said Anthierin.
Flinn was looking at the chest with the focused, intent appreciation of a professional encountering a problem they had been specifically designed by temperament and training to solve.
"Flinn," said Lexel.
