The Four Vows of the Closed Eye

The chamber is round and cold, its stone walls stitched with fading gold leaf and soot-dark runes. Four altars stand at the compass points around a floor mosaic of a closed eye, and four relics wait on a dais beneath a lintel carved with an orderly list of clues. When a relic is placed correctly, the mosaic’s blue veins flare softly and a low chime rolls through the room; when a relic is wrong, the air snaps with a sharp metallic taste and the nearest altar exhales a puff of ash.