The hand grasped around the edge of the glowing fissure, its long fingers curling into the stone like roots burrowing through crusted earth. It tugged again, this time slow, steady, and out of the light, a shape developed.
Not a beast, not a man, something else.
The air grew hotter. Not the acute heat of fire but the deep, throbbing heat of something alive. It rose up from below, from the very earth under the Vale of Murmur. Kael gasped and stumbled back, resting on his stick. "That thing," he whispered. "It's not only a guardian, is it?"
"No," Serakha said softly. "It's the lock."
The creature stepped completely into the world now. It was taller than all of them. It was with skin like obsidian, red-light veins pulsing through him like a heartbeat. Its face was long, with no mouth initially. Just empty space. Then, before their eyes, it took the shape of a smile.
