The return from the void had changed them both, but as Selena and Dante stood once more in the deep Empire's impossible geometry, she noticed something wrong with him. His shadows, which had wrapped around her consciousness in the void and helped rebuild her collapsed architecture, now flickered with irregular patterns. They stuttered and spasmed like a flame fighting against wind, and through their binding she felt something she had never felt from him before not just pain, but a deep, grinding wrongness that existed at the core of his being.
"Dante?" she asked, reaching for him with concern flooding their connection. "What's happening to you?"
