The dark did not swallow Isabella.
It clothed her.
The moment the door sealed shut behind her, sound became something else—denser, older. Not silence, but listening. The kind of hush that lived in bones, in ruins, in the last breath before thunder. The chamber around her breathed in tandem. Not stone. Not wood. Something between root and muscle, pulsing with a rhythm not her own. It matched hers slowly, adjusting, syncing, until her heartbeat echoed not just in her chest, but in the air itself.
She did not call for Elira.
She knew Elira could no longer hear.
And somehow, that was right.
She moved forward, her boots sinking slightly into a floor as soft as loam but thick with the tension of something freshly disturbed. The runes carved into her arms flickered, but not from danger. Fro
