He held his hand steady in the air, resisting the urge to touch it, choosing instead to feel the energy radiating from the screen. "If you really want to speak," he said quietly, "then show me. Don't hide behind broken words."
Suddenly, the screen sparked. A tiny arc of energy, like a flicker of lightning, leapt from its surface. Alaric instinctively stepped back, shielding the jade box with his arm. But the spark didn't attack. It twisted, spun, and curved mid-air, forming a symbol that hovered in front of him.
A flicker of memory tugged at the edges of his mind. An old manuscript buried deep in the restricted wing of the Central Archives. He had seen this pattern before, etched in the margins of a page that no one dared translate. They had called it "The Language of the Unseen," dismissed by most scholars as superstition. But now, here it was—alive, real, and communicating.
Alaric swallowed hard, his heartbeat pounding in his chest. "What is this…?"
