The battlefield shifted once more, not with cracks but with rhythm.
The pulse that had been faint before now struck like a hammer against the marrow of every being present. It didn't roar. It didn't command. It simply was, undeniable, older than crowns and cycles.
Roman staggered under the weight of it, blood dripping between his clenched knuckles. "…That's no battlefield. That's a summons."
Naval grit his teeth, trident thrumming as if resisting the call. "Summons? To what?"
Leon's eyelids fluttered, his broken body little more than a vessel barely clinging to will. Yet his voice—ragged, cracked, but carrying—slipped between the pulses like a thread binding meaning.
"…Not summons. Recognition."
The earth beneath them convulsed. From the sea of eyes carved into the Tower's bones rose shapes—colossal, humanoid, but wrong. Their outlines rippled like half-forgotten memories, their flesh composed of runes and fractures instead of sinew. They were not soldiers. They were witnesses.
