Ten years after the Deep Ones knelt in the snow, Elara dreamed of silver light again.
She was standing on a beach of black sand, staring at a sea that glowed like molten metal. The waves didn't crash. They whispered. And beneath the whisper, a voice she had hoped never to hear again.
Did you think you had ended me?
Elara's hand went to her sword. It wasn't there.
I am not the void. I am what was before the void. What will be after.
"Who are you?"
I am the Deepening. The hunger beneath hunger. The void's void.
"I don't understand."
You will.
The silver sea rose.
Elara woke screaming.
---
James reached her room before her feet touched the floor.
He was old now—seventy-three, grey-haired, his body bent by decades of fighting. But his eyes were still sharp.
"The Deepening," Elara
