The mansion doors shut behind me with a quiet thud, sealing me off from the warmth and relative safety of Nero's watchful gaze. Outside, the stars pierced the night like tiny, frozen pinpricks in the velvet sky. The air was sharp, every breath crystallizing as it left my mouth. I pulled my coat tighter and began the journey.
The Temple of the Serpent was no ordinary ruin. It was a monument of forgotten ambition, a structure left behind by a civilization that once mingled magic and madness with equal fervor. Built on the outskirts of Nimran, it stood as a relic from an era where serpentine beings were venerated as divine arbiters of power and enlightenment. And in the labyrinth beneath its ancient stones, the Basilisk Heart lay waiting—guarded by trials that were, if the legends were accurate, "designed to test one's worth." Which, in practical terms, meant "designed to kill you in increasingly inventive ways."
