Adam's Deep Camouflage unfurled from him like a living shadow, a skill honed from his earliest days as a viper and now empowered by his legendary essence. It didn't just hide him; it woven a shroud of visual static and scent-muffling silence over his entire party. To any outside observer, they were nothing more than a slight warping of the pale light, a vague shadow that slid silently across the bone-white floor.
They moved like ghosts through the graveyard of the canyon, the only sound the soft, almost imperceptible scrape of Adam's scales on stone. The oppressive silence was a weight in itself.
Then, they saw it.
In the deepest recess of the canyon, coiled around the base of a massive, glowing crystal monolith, was the serpent.
