Far away, in the mist-shrouded heart of Aethelgard, Kairen Zephyrwind was on his knees.
His hands gripped the cold, humming surface of the crystal platform, his knuckles white. His "Inner Sanctum," the mental fortress he had built brick by agonizing brick, was vibrating violently, rattled by the aftershocks of a terror he wasn't supposed to feel.
He had felt it. The Void Sphere.
It hadn't been a vague sense of danger. It had been a screaming, pitch-black hole in the "Essence Web," a gravity well of pure annihilation that had targeted the specific, familiar soul-signatures of his friends. He had felt Kaelan's despair. He had felt Lia's silent acceptance of death.
"NO!" Kairen gasped, squeezing his eyes shut, pushing his consciousness outward, straining against the dampening mists of the valley. "Don't let it hit... please, don't let it hit..."
He waited for the scream. He waited for the silence of death.
But it didn't come.
Instead, the "Essence Web" shuddered.
