The dry heat streaming from the secluded corner of the vault was skin-burning and metal.
It tasted of scorched bone, sulfur, and ancient cinder, cutting fully through the damp chill of the underground bazaar.
Lu Chen stopped three paces before a low slate slab propped on two salt-crusted beer casks.
Behind the slab, leaning against the damp brick foundation of the old coin foundry, sat an ancient scavenger.
His eye sockets were sewn fully shut with coarse black horsehair thread.
His fingernails were stained yellow from decades of scraping grave goods out of waterlogged burial mounds.
He smelled of rancid sulfur liquor and dried bitterleaf.
The blind old scavenger puffed on a chipped clay pipe, his breathing wet and labored.
