The black crystal broke with a sound like a bell cracking in half.
Aether felt it before he heard it. A pulse rolled outward through the Ashen Star Wilderness, low and heavy, passing through the soles of his boots and up through his ribs until his teeth ached. The shards fell like black rain, and where they touched the ash-grey ground they dissolved into thin threads of smoke.
Then the Wilderness went silent.
It was not the silence of a quiet night. It was the silence of a held breath. The wind stopped. The distant howls that had followed them for two days stopped. Even the ash, which always drifted lazily across this cursed land, hung motionless in the air.
"Aether," Liora said quietly, one hand already on the hilt of her weapon. "Something is wrong."
"I know."
