Outside Marcus's Soul Realm, Eira spent the time it takes an incense stick to burn halfway down waiting for the catastrophe she had readied half the Endless Forest to contain, and with every passing breath the utter absence of one grew more unsettling than any explosion could have been.
Phei and Marcus lay unconscious near the heart of the vast enclosure while the barrier around them thrummed beneath the combined might of Eira, the Dragon Lady and the Undead Queen.
Layer upon layer of dome had been woven together until the sealed land resembled a small world of its own buried within the Endless Forest, its outer shell fortified far beyond anything Eira had raised during Kyle's enslavement.
She remembered that first attempt all too clearly.
The moment Phei forced the Slave Mark upon Kyle's Progenitor Soul, the eruption that followed struck her barrier hard enough to send a soul-shaking waves tearing through the forest.
