My fingers hovered an inch above the obsidian fragment. The air between my skin and its surface crystallized, shimmering with tiny, geometric patterns of frost and light. The pull was magnetic, a deep, gravitational yearning that originated in the marrow of my bones. My own hidden shard answered with a surge of heat, not painful, but immense—like standing too close to a star.
"To claim it is to bind it to your soul's journey," Matriarch Elara warned, her star-filled eyes unblinking. "The two fragments will resonate. You will become a lighthouse in the spiritual gloom, visible to any being sensitive to the Primordial frequency. The First will see you more clearly than his own reflection."
Damien's hand closed around my forearm, not to pull me back, but to steady me. His touch was an ancho
