Deep beneath the royal palace,
Deliya pushed open the door and entered the heavily guarded room, hanging the oil lamp in her hand on the wall beside her.
The faint yellow glow dispelled the darkness around the girl, but it could not illuminate the entire room. Beyond the reach of the lamplight, all remained pitch-black.
Within this deep, secluded chamber, darkness hung silently over every inch of space like a wordless guardian. The dim yellow flame was like the most distant star in the night sky, trying its best yet only barely outlining one corner of the room. Everything else remained immersed in boundless darkness, mysterious and profound.
The room was vast, as though it could swallow every sound and ray of light, making one instinctively feel small and alone. Who would have known that such a mysterious place existed beneath the royal palace?
The walls surrounding the room were smooth as mirrors, with no paintings or carvings, only monotonous, cold, hard surfaces. They reflected the faint shadows of the lamp, further emphasizing the emptiness and loneliness of the space. These walls seemed to shut out all the noise of the outside world, turning this place into an isolated world of its own.
The floor of the entire room was formed from a massive slab of bluish stone. Unlike the walls, its surface was not completely smooth. The passage of time had left mottled traces upon it, and some places had sunk into deep darkness, recording the flow of bygone years.
Yet the most eye-catching feature of the room was undoubtedly the enormous, intricate magic array engraved upon the stone slab.
It occupied most of the floor. Its patterns were tangled and complex, like interwoven tree roots in nature or the intersecting paths of stars across the night sky. It