The creature rose—towering and formless, yet somehow aware. Tendrils lashed the air, dripping with void-tainted blood. Eyes blinked across its flesh, each one fixated on Rael.
Darius hurled his axe first. It sank into the beast's side—but melted in a hiss of steam.
"Fall back!" Mira shouted, slashing through a whipping tendril. "Rael—do something!"
But Rael couldn't move.
The black star on his chest burned, his veins pulsing with abyssal energy. The creature wasn't just a monster—it was a summoned echo, a manifestation of the Whispering One's will.
Rael's vision blurred. The world twisted.
In a flash, he stood elsewhere—beneath a vast sky of writhing shadows. A throne of bone loomed before him. And seated upon it—
"You're not ready," a voice coiled into his mind. "But you will be."
The Whispering One.
Rael clenched his fists. "Why are you doing this?"
The being didn't answer. Instead, a fragment of its power surged through Rael's chest, igniting his core.
The vision shattered.
He gasped—back in Velrath.
The creature charged.
Rael raised his hand—and shadows burst forth like flame. He met the creature head-on, abyss against abyss.
Mira and Darius watched in stunned silence as the two forces collided, darkness swallowing the plaza. But in the chaos, Mira noticed something else.
Symbols—old, glowing faintly—etched into the stones around them.
This wasn't just a ruin.
It was a seal.
And it was breaking.