The ritual deepened.
The pulse of necrotic energy running through the chamber began to synchronize with Lamair's breathing, slow, deliberate, steady. The sigil beneath them brightened in intervals, like the slow, rhythmic heartbeat of some great being awakening from its slumber.
The sound was no longer silent. Whispering voices now filled the room, low, unearthly murmurs that wove around the air like smoke. They came from nowhere, yet everywhere at once: layered voices of men and women long dead, children laughing faintly, cries and songs from forgotten times. The necrotic hum of the circle resonated in Lamair's bones, a vibration that seemed to bridge the realms of the living and the departed.
Lamair raised both hands, and the mists responded like trained beasts. Tendrils of green and black vapor spiraled upward, swirling around him and Rhask's body in a storm of deathlight. He moved his hands apart, drawing invisible threads, manipulating the very essence of decay and rebirth.
