The air in the burial chamber didn't just vibrate; it screamed. As my fingers closed around the Seal of the Eclipse, the liquid obsidian surged upward, swallowing my hands in a cold, viscous fire that traveled up the black veins of my arms. The sensation was nothing like the searing heat of the sun; it was the absolute, crushing weight of a mountain combined with the infinite silence of the stars.
"Elara!" Silas’s voice reached me through a thick veil of violet static.
I turned, but I didn't see him with my eyes. I saw him with my soul. He was a pillar of roaring shadow, his own Void-essence reaching out to meet the storm I was becoming. The bond between us—the golden tether he had once described—was being forged into something indestructible, tempered by the ancient magic of the Eclipse
