Saleos's face went rigid.
For a long moment, he did not speak. His eyes moved from one rune to the next, tracing their shapes again and again, as if he were waiting for them to change into something else if he stared long enough.
"…Infiltration runes," he said at last. "Anchors."
"Yes," I replied.
I did not add anything more. The truth was, I did not fully understand their deeper function either. I only knew what I had seen and felt. These runes were not normal runes. They were gateways of a sort. Not open portals, but seeds. Seeds that could be used to form pathways, to allow Phantoms to arrive, or for something far worse to reach through from the other side when the conditions were right.
Saleos's fists clenched slowly at his sides.
"These don't get implanted by accident," he said, his voice turning colder. "Only Eternals have the ability to create and implant something like this."
That sentence surprised me.
Only Eternals.
