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We stride past the altar and halt at the stone door. Words are etched into its surface, rippling with aether.
Before you may enter,
Look upon me with great care,
On my words and nothing more.
Only those with courage,
Dare to pay my price.
We both silently read the words and then exchange glances.
“Another riddle,” Eliya says with a sigh.
“I thought you were good at them?”
“I never said I was good at them, just that you were bad at them.”
I would pull a face at her, but my thoughts are too fast, spiraling out of control. The door’s words echo over and over in my mind, forming a rhythm so relentless I can barely think.
Read carefully. Pay the price.
I read the riddle again and again until the shimmering letters blur. Still, I do not know what price the door demands.
“Could it be money?” Eliya muses aloud.
“Maybe,” I say with a shrug, having no other suggestions myself. “So, do we just say money to the door, and it will let us pass?”
“With the riddle I faced, I had to write the answer onto the door before it let me through.”
“With aether?”
“Yeah, beneath the riddle.”
I take a step closer to the door and murmurvolu. Violet light radiates from my index finger, and I use it to trace each letter of ‘money’into the stone. Aether glistens where I mark the stone. But as I write each letter, the previous one disappears and fades into glittering dust.
I glance back at Eliya. “It didn’t work.”
Her brows furrow.
If we don’t break through this door soon...
I banish the thought. Thinking like that won’t help me solve the riddle.
“Any other ideas?” I ask.
“Maybe this one is different.” She holds out her palm and muttersconparios. Her coin purse appears, and she hurriedly pulls it open, retrieving a copper coin. She holds it up to me, and it glints in the dazzling light of her illumination orb. An outline of the Aether Tower is pressed into the coin’s metallic surface. “Maybe we need to literally pay the door before it will open.”
“Maybe.”
Eliya tosses the copper coin at the door. It bounces off the stone with a metallic clink, but nothing happens. She swears under her breath.
I gesture to the golden altar behind us. “Surely that wouldn’t be here for no reason? Maybe try placing the coin inside there?”
With a nod, Eliya hurries over to the bowl and throws the copper coin inside. The chime of metal sings through the cave.
Again, nothing happens.
