The Threefold Return

You enter a circular temple chamber whose floor has been broken into a precise grid of black basalt tiles. Copper lines divide the tiles into a five-point path that runs from the western doorway toward a sealed reliquary in the east. Three loose tiles rest against the walls, each carved with a different image: an urn spilling ash, an open eye, and a sun rising over a horizon. Five braziers hiss with dim red flame, and every few breaths the floor gives a faint subterranean thrum, as though something beneath it is waiting to be aligned. The air smells of cold soot, old incense, and metal warmed by hidden machinery.