At the top of the plinth, he feels like he’s on display for the kingdom, as if he’s a shiny piece of loot presented in a museum. She peers inside the glass case to see him pillowed in moth bitten silk, a tiny gold placard next to him that says dungeon idiot circa whenever, the only one of his party to fall victim to a simple tripwire trap. Maybe it would be better for him to stay up here for the rest of eternity, so he wouldn’t have to listen to everyone else harp on him for being so foolish.

But the ground beneath him groans to life once more, the tower chamber bursting to life with the sound of grinding stone and clinking metal as it drags the pillar back down into the earth. He swirls and twirls like a runaway carousel until he’s nearly dizzy with it, the world spinning around him even after he’s stopped at the bottom of the tower and reunited with the rest of his party. When the world stops spinning, the first person to come into view is Wraith. Haunter, too, who waves at him then gives him a thumbs up.

The floor clicks back into place with a mighty puff of dust. The sound of metal gears turning goes on for a few more seconds, then stops until there’s a deafening silence left in the tower. Is that it? Is it really as simple as that? No, he thinks, when the sound picks back up again, it’s never that simple.

In the center of the room, smaller than the pillar he’d been standing on, is yet another pillar, one that sinks down into the earth and slides back into a holding chamber with a loud groan. Archimedes peers down into the hole left behind and startles back when the tower shudders one last time. Out it spits a pedestal and on it a tomb.

“Oh, not this shit again,” Frankie whines almost immediately.

The tiles beneath their feet start to pop out of place, shifting and rotating against one another until they form some sort of a hieroglyphic map that spiderwebs out from the sarcophagus and into the four exits presented to them. They all watch, intrigued, as a viscous red liquid spills into the grooves, starting from each corner and ending at the mysterious sarcophagus. The interior of it slowly fills to the brim, spitting and gurgling as it coughs up bones and bodies alike, and it emits a foul odor that makes Archimedes gag.

Basil opts not to look into the primordial soup.

But Archimedes can’t help but look into it. His reflection stares back—or, at least, a pale imitation of his reflection stares back—with a pair of glossy white eyes and a face that’s half missing, peeled back to expose ivory bone underneath. Several teeth are missing and what remains are nearly rotted out of his skull.

When Frankie peers into it, he expects to see the same thing he did when encountering the sarcophagus for the first time. But it’s glaringly different this time. Half of his head is missing, an enormous crater formed between his two droopy ears, and there’s a wicked mixture of both blood and gray matter leaking down his forehead. Maggots eat away at his exposed brain.

When Wraith peers into it, nothing about him is different at all.