The beast's low growl rolls through the trees like thunder swallowed by earth.
"Little girl," it rasps, the voice a guttering thing not meant for human throats, "unfortunately you're going to die in your dream." It laughs then — a wet, ugly sound that bounces off trunks and splinters the silence.
Dila freezes. For a long, ragged second the forest only has her — the damp smell of upturned soil, the metallic tang of crushed stone, the dust still hanging in the air where her golems fell. Her lungs clamp; her fingers tighten on the staff until the coldness of the metal bites into her palm. Her whole body is trembling, small and raw in the clearing between broken trunks and the wreckage of animated stone.
Nari's voice, bright and fierce inside her head, claws through the panic. "Master — snap out of it! You will not lose. I believe in you!" The pink core inside the staff flares, a hot, stubborn point of light in the dark.
