The descent into the fourth floor felt like falling through a memory not their own.
With each step, the air grew colder, suffused with an ancient sorrow that seemed to whisper across their skin.
An oppressive weight hung in the atmosphere, as if invisible eyes were watching them, the very stones beneath their feet bearing silent witness to their intrusion.
When they finally emerged, the chamber that greeted them was unlike any they had encountered before.
The chamber was vast, a grand yet ruined throne room, frozen in the decaying splendor of a civilization long since consumed by the abyss of time.
Tattered banners, their sigils indecipherable, hung lifelessly from towering marble columns, their fabric rustling softly in a wind that had not blown in centuries.
Cracked statues of forgotten kings and queens lined the perimeter, their faces eroded into grotesque expressions of formless disdain, as though they had long since abandoned any pretense of nobility.
