The entity parts its lips in a slow, deliberate smile, and the mortal face you demanded makes the expression unsettlingly easy to read. It answers without hurry, saying that in this shape it keeps thirty-two teeth, intact and sharp enough to matter. The temple’s silence tightens around the number, as if it has become a vow, and your hidden arsenal gives a faint mechanical murmur beneath your skin. The faceless statues along the corridor seem to lean in by some trick of shadow, listening for what you will ask next.

The figure’s gaze remains fixed on you, patient and measuring, as though it understands that counting things is another way of testing what can be wounded. Behind it, black light breathes softly against the stone, and the distant bell below the floor falls silent again. The air between you is now oddly intimate, made more dangerous by clarity than mystery. It waits for your next move with the stillness of a blade held at the throat of a world.