The preparation was a strange and intimate agony.
Inside a protected room Cassiathon faced his father. Positioned between them resting in Celeste's palm-formed hands floated a globe of completely transparent water, about the size of a marble suspended an inch above her skin.
"Concentrate on the notion " the Angel directed, his voice the sole noise in the silence of the chamber. "Not the strength. The concept of stopping. The instant, between tones. The calm following a breath."
Cassiathon shut his eyes. He sought the deep assurance, within himself—the heritage of the Reaper. He didn't draw it out. Instead he conceived it. He molded it mentally into a geometric pinpoint of complete silence.
Opposite him he sensed his father replicating the act. Amplified immensely. The Angel of Death embodied the idea. It wasn't a grant of power; it was a provision of a framework, a model of silence so pristine it rendered the atmosphere, in the room dense and oppressive.
"Now " Celeste murmured, her tone tense. "Pass it into the water."
Cassiathon pictured inserting that moment of silence inside the sphere. He sensed a chill depart from him not a loss of energy but a shift, in significance.
The water remained unfrozen. It stayed the same.. Observing it now disturbed the mind. It appeared as a tear, in existence camouflaged as a drop.
Celeste gasped, a stream of blood dripping from her nostril. Grasping the idea felt like trapping a hole, within a soap bubble. "Its… prepared " she said with effort.
Sierra Slate grasped the sphere with a vial made from designed inert glass. She treated it as if it were plutonium. "Harmonics?" she inquired of Celeste.
"Designed to vibrate at the core frequency of Lorelei's empowerment " Celeste mentioned, dabbing her nose. "The Abyssal echo, in her tone. It will cling to her melody like a parasite. The stronger she sings, the quicker it spreads to her."
Sierra agreed with a nod. "Then we're leaving. Allow us 48 hours." She vanished from the chamber, a shadow moving through the mountain corridors.
Cassiathon collapsed, drained beyond anything he'd experienced before. Though he hadn't wielded any power he sensed an emptiness as though he'd given away a fragment of his souls design.
His father looked at him. "You understand now. The difference between force and concept. You have given a fragment of my nature a temporary, independent existence. Remember this feeling. This is the weight of true creation. And true consequence."