Senithe did not move. Beside her, the Dark Regent had gone absolutely still, a statue of living shadow. Maiden, on Senithe's other side, had stopped breathing entirely.
{The other was at my veil,} the Eye said again, slower, each word a hammer of ancient gold striking against the dark, {and pressed it. And pressed it a second time. And pressed it a third. And my Divine Essence — which has once held back oceans of gods since before her kind had a word for gods — did not stir.}
The chamber dimmed.
Dimmed — in the presence of an Eye whose very nature was catastrophic brilliance, whose essence poured forth in rivers of molten gold — the light actually receded, as though the god behind the Eye had drawn inward into the oldest dark of its own memory and found something there it did not like.
{That has not happened.}
Not is not possible. Not cannot be. Has not happened before.
The weight of that tense was worse than any denial.
