She tilts her head back, tracing the thin column of water upward with her eyes. At first there is only dark swallowing dark. Then the breathing darkness shifts — as it does when it chooses to make room — and she can just discern something above: a gap, a seam, a pale thread of light leaking through stone. Each falling droplet catches that light for a single spark before it vanishes into the basin below. There must be a way up. She edges around the bone ring, careful not to disturb a single small piece, and discovers stone steps carved directly into the far wall — shallow, worn smooth, climbing in a tight spiral into the black overhead. She cannot see where they end. Ember Fox presses its warm flank briefly against her ankle, then sits back, amber eyes fixed on the stairway. Whatever waits above, they are not the first to wonder.