The quiet sounds of the sleeping winter forest resumed nonchalantly as the scaled creature approached the yawning hole. The scent of disturbed earth drifted up to their nostrils as the slightly warmer air escaped up into the light. 

There was no challenge from the blackness when Cihr'Cten's palm closed around the stone, but for a brief moment the darkness melted away, a path revealed down into the depths. Something wrought by skilled and dedicated hands. Something that was secret. Revealed to his mind like a landscape illuminated by a single bolt of lightning and then cast once again into obscurity, startling to observe and difficult to recollect once it was gone. One thing they could be certain about was that this collapsed hole was all that was left of the true entrance, from back in a time before the great tree had sprouted. 

The orb itself was slightly too large for the Israiph to close their hand around, like a grapefruit. The lingering traces of magic did not prevent the orb from being as icy cold as the snowy forest around them, and it would quickly become uncomfortable in their hand if they did not tuck it away. No action would recreate the brief vision, but the sense that the item was magical could be readily felt.

Upon closer inspection, it would turn out that while the ball of jade was smooth and shiny, though dirty from being caught in the roots of a tree all this time, there were fine stylized engravings all over the surface in a repeating pattern of triangles and circles.

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