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Droplets of rain fell from the blackening sky and hissed as they struck the torches and flaming braziers.

The flames danced and fizzled in the increasing downboard, throwing flickering shadows onto the spirals carved

into the weathered stone of the tombs exterior.

The procession halted outside the entrance.

The pitch black passageway led deep into the earth-covered man.

A chant rose from the grip, echoing down into the depths, bouncing off the stacked stone walls

the huge slabs of rock that formed the roof of the passageway.

A middle-aged man, his brown beards streaked with gray and dripping rain,

spirals of black dots tattooed on his forearms, stepped toward the void.

He called out, raising a detached skull in his hands, asking for the permission of the tombs occupants so that they could enter.

They were his ancestors.

The skull belonged to one of them, his grandfather's grandfather, who had first built this man.

It was time to return the venerated ancestor's skull to the tomb, he called out, along with a new addition.

The man's son, an older adolescent, whose body lay on a long wooden plank surrounded by stone pendants and acts with a head of polished jade and a cone.

Satisfied, the man grabbed a torch from one of his companions and entered the tomb.

The procession followed behind him.

The flames illuminated the path ahead, leading forward and down.

Their steps echoed off the stone slabs as they passed skulls and long bones set into niches on the walls.

Whole body is lying prominently in small chambers leading off the main passageway.

The procession's feet occasionally crunching on odd bits of fallen bone.

...