The scream tore through the Foundry like thunder.
Not sound alone, resonance.
The walls vibrated with it. The crystal obelisk before Elara trembled violently, fractures racing across its luminous surface like lightning trapped in glass. The very air bent inward, folding around the epicenter of that cry.
Lucien.
Elara froze, her heart twisting so sharply it stole her breath. She didn't just hear the scream.
She felt it.
His magic was colliding with the Veil again, not as a controlled surge, but as something primal. Raw. Ancient. Wrong.
"Lucien," she breathed. "He's inside it."
Lyra grabbed her wrist, fingers digging hard enough to bruise. "Elara, wait—"
But waiting had never saved him before.
Elara stepped forward anyway. The Foundry seemed to recoil from her approach. The air thickened, heavy with metallic heat and the scent of scorched runes. Her mark flared beneath her skin, pulsing in rhythm with the obelisk's glow.
The crystal shifted from pale blue to blood-red.
