The intensity of their stares made Beam's chest tremble for just a moment. He found himself looking around the room again, as he paused halfway up the stairs.
The room – or what he had thought to be a room – was far vaster than he had first realized. Or maybe it had simply grown too. It was more like the steps of a temple, some mighty temple, something that one might hear in story books.
Against those stone walls, flame braziers burned, and banners hung, colourless manners, without a crest, as though someone had forgotten to include that detail.
When Beam looked back again, he found that the steps had grown. There were now fifty stairs between him and the young man and the young woman, and fifty more before himself and the floor.
He decided to take another step, a grim expression of determination on his face.
