Eliot has apparently never heard the saying about curiosity and the cat, or simply does not realize that the same might be true for magicians. Nothing happens when he removes the items from the chest, but when he picks up the knife and looks closely at it—

One moment it is a normal knife with strange symbols etched into the flat of the blade, curling spirals that at once seem to have no beginning and no end, and the next the knife is covered in cold wet blood, the thick liquid coating his hand and dripping down off the blade. The bowl is coated with it, the interior recently filled and emptied, and that red sheen on the walls is darker, shining in the light of the candle flame, almost as if...