You move at once, lantern in hand, and the temple answers with a drag of cold air through its throat. The list in your head becomes action: metal, ignition, powder, and some shape that can hold them all together. You pass the faceless statues and kneel beside a fallen brazier, where blackened iron curls at the edges like dead petals. The bell below gives a muted peal, as if pleased by your determination and annoyed by it all the same.

As you sift through rubble, your fingers find a broken hinge, a nail bent into a hook, and a strip of brass nailed to a shrine board. Nearby, a cracked reliquary leaks a dusting of pale, bitter grains that sting your nose and cling to your skin. The corridor seems to breathe around you, each scrape of metal sounding louder than it should in the hush. Somewhere deeper in the temple, something shifts at the prospect of being built into a weapon.