The crack in the ground hums like a throat clearing before a scream.
Light leaks up in pulses—wrong light, resonance light—painting my hands in violet and silver as I crouch over the seam. The mirror lining inside the fissure doesn’t reflect my face so much as it distorts it, slicing me into angles and versions. One of them looks calm. One of them looks like the Tower. One of them looks like a ward who never learned how to stop bracing.
I can feel the “lattice heart” below—something installed in the Underveil like a parasite pressed into the Veins. It beats in a steady, deliberate rhythm that doesn’t belong to Drakaira’s natural hum.
If this thing relays—
People die. Not theoretically. Not in a report. Real bodies, real screams, real silence.
Kaien is still holding Ren’s attention beh
