The interior of the collector's vessel was a jarring shift from the warm, organic chaos of Draconia. Here, the air was sterilized to the point of pain, stripped of all scent and moisture, while the walls hummed with a low, predatory frequency.
Elara floated in the center of a holding chamber, suspended within a containment field that felt like being trapped inside a block of freezing, unyielding glass. Beneath her, the world she had just resurrected was shrinking, a marble of gold and green lost in the vast, velvet dark of the cosmos.
A heavy door slid open with a sound of pressurized air, revealing a figure who stood framed by the harsh, clinical light of the corridor. He was tall, his silhouette elongated by a long, obsidian duster coat that seemed to absorb the ambient light of the r
