Then it was gone.
Lindarion exhaled slowly, still gripping the weapon. "It's not Maeven's," he said at last. "But it's his kind of power."
Nysha frowned. "What do you mean?"
"It belongs to this continent. And whatever it was made for… it wasn't meant to stay buried."
—
The sword was cold.
Not just metal-in-the-winter cold, something deeper, a chill that crept into the bones and wrapped around the soul like a coil of ice.
His fingers hovered for a moment before he tightened his grip, half expecting the steel to cut him for daring to touch it. The faint hum of mana in its blade wasn't normal. It was wrong. Old. Ancient in a way that made the air feel heavy in his lungs.
The moment his skin met the hilt, the world cracked.
No, not cracked. It folded.
The fortress vanished. Stone, air, light, everything imploded into a void that had no direction, no temperature, no sound. His stomach twisted as if gravity had been pulled from under him, his ears ringing in absolute silence.
