The chamber pulsed once, like a single heartbeat, and the pit erupted.
Shadows poured upward in a spiraling torrent, not like smoke, but like living limbs of fractured memories, reaching with clawed fingers of half-formed light. They screeched in overlapping voices—thousands of whispers colliding into a maddening chorus.
Nysha was already moving. She grabbed Lindarion's forearm and yanked him back as a tendril of obsidian mist lashed where his chest had been a second earlier.
"Lindarion—focus!" she snapped.
But he could barely hear her.
Because the shadows were speaking to him.
Not in words.
Not in sentences.
In visions.
Flashes hammered his mind—
A forest burning under a violet moon.
A titan kneeling with its throat torn open.
A woman with silver hair lying in a pool of her own blood—
Luneth.
He jerked, breath catching. The gold-shadow aura around him surged out uncontrollably.
Nysha's eyes widened. "He's resonating with them—pull him out!"
