The white-robed figures who had appeared so suddenly ascended the altar and sat cross-legged in silence.
"Look! The Pilgrimage is about to begin!" someone in the crowd shouted, voice brimming with excitement.
No sooner had the words left his mouth than the roar came again. A surge of draconic energy rippled through the air, rolling off the altar like a living tide. Ethan felt it wash over him—dense, ancient, and overwhelming—as it poured into the bodies of the people gathered below.
"Hmm?" The sudden intensity of the energy made him stiffen. Something inside him stirred in response, something he hadn't felt for a long time. The change came from the Ancestral Dragon's Imperial Aura he had inherited from Aldric the First. That power had been dormant for so long, suppressed and nearly devoured by the Quintessence Bone and the Tree of Life that coexisted within him. Ethan had almost forgotten it existed at all.
