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The chamber had never sounded like this.
Heat breathed from the pool; the runes along the wall burned steady and bright. Under Kai's left palm the central cradle thrummed like a slow drum. Under his right hand, the essence pool clung and pulled, as if it had learned the shape of his wrist and would not let go.
"Begin," he had said.
They obeyed.
At first it was only a pattern change—a deeper pulse, a quicker beat beneath it. Then Kai felt hunger wake in ten thousand, in fifty, in all. Not wild hunger. Shaped. The law he set—Fight. Join. Become. Defend.—moved through the chamber like a tide. It met small lives that were ready to open and drove them forward.
