"Power never comes as a gift. It comes as a wager." , From the Notes of an Unnamed Ascendant
The serpents lunged as one.
Their bodies scraped against stone, the sound like grinding blades drawn across bone. Obsidian scales flashed with a green radiance that pulsed in time with the altar's shards. Their hiss was not mere sound, it was vibration, a resonance that shuddered through ribs and rattled in skulls, filling teeth with grit and ears with static. The air churned with dust and shards of stone as the chamber itself seemed to quake at their release.
"Shields!" Sofia's command cut through the chaos like a blade. Her voice was iron, unshaken even as the ground buckled beneath their feet. She raised her sword high, steel catching the glow of the altar, throwing slashes of silver light across the writhing coils.
