The vault smelled of old metal and something faintly like seaweed that had been kept too long in a chest.
Caedrion's boots whispered across stone that remembered hands long dead; light from the cradle painted his face in rust light.
The perfected battery had gone home.
Now the aftermath hummed through the ribs of the cavern like a distant pulse.
She moved inside that pulse, small filaments of rustlight twining and snapping with impatient grace.
Even within the barrier she tested distance and limit, gliding to the lattice and letting her strands strike it as if testing glass for give.
She could not cross the shimmer that had hung over Dawnhaven for generations.
She could pace it, circle it, work the space inside it like a cat in a window. Free in a room. Trapped in a world.
"This is dull," she murmured after a moment, voice like chipped bell.
