The silence was wrong.
Draven felt it immediately the abrupt, brutal absence where Elara’s presence should have been. The bond had never been quiet, not even when strained. It had pulsed, burned, anchored him through instinct and certainty.
Now there was nothing.
Not distance.
Not resistance.
Nothing.
He slammed his fists into the sealed stone again, the impact splitting his knuckles open as blood streaked across the ancient runes. Power surged from him in violent waves, cracking the ground, but the vault did not answer.
“Elara!” His roar tore through Nightfall, raw and unrestrained. “Open!”
The stone remained unmoved.
Behind him, the Keepers staggered under the backlash of his rage. Even they could not approach the sealed entrance now it radiated a pressure that rejected all auth
