The air was still burning when I registered the impact.
Extreme heat from my own attack radiated outward from the point of contact, scorching the sinkhole walls on both sides. The lightning had carved deep grooves into the stone — glass-smooth channels where rock had melted and re-hardened almost instantly.
I floated in the silence that followed, breathing steadily, spear loose in one hand while dark and lightning energy still coiled around my forearm.
The darkness below was absolute. Whatever had been firing at me had gone completely still, but I knew better than to lower my guard.
Then I heard it — a whisper of displaced air, thin and precise, cutting upward from somewhere beneath me.
The red light returned, darker and stronger. That was when I saw it clearly for the first time: an eye the size of a car, suspended in the darkness below, its pupil locked on me while more beams gathered inside it like a storm behind glass.
