Golden Vault

It’s a vault. That isn’t a metaphor. Every gold surface in this hall is a deposit, and every deposit is somebody, compressed.

Tourists come now. There’s a gift shop by the east stair. A guide in a blue jacket tells them the vault was built to protect the cog, and they nod and take pictures, and not one of them notices that the doors lock from the outside.

I don’t blame them. I spent my first four thousand years in here thinking I was the treasure.