The silence in the chamber was heavier than the stone walls surrounding it. Zeven stood before the obsidian pedestal, his fingers hovering mere inches above the cold, dark iron of the mask. The air felt charged, a static hum that vibrated in his very teeth, smelling faintly of ancient ozone and stagnant time. Every instinct he possessed screamed at him to back away, to flee from the dark allure of the mask, yet his blood, his secondary heart, and the very marrow of his bones felt a magnetic pull. He was a creature built from fragments of a forgotten past, and this room, this mask, was the final piece of a puzzle he had been forced to live.
"You have been waiting for this moment since the day you were brought into this world," he whispered, his voice trembling with a mix of dread and antic
