The dormant Keeper was beneath the old power plant on the river - one of the Thresholds the Circle had been draining for years, its seal weakened to near-collapse, its guardian long since retreated into hibernation to preserve what little energy remained.
Leo approached the seal alone. The ritual required solitude - the Keeper would not wake for an audience.
The chamber was a concrete bunker, built in the 1940s and abandoned in the 1980s, now lit only by the faint blue-white glow of the seal itself. The Threshold energy was thin here, stretched and faded, like a radio signal from a dying star. Leo could feel its exhaustion through the Heartstone - centuries of vigilance, decades of draining, a guardian that had given everything and received nothing in return.
He knelt before the seal an
