The silence that descended upon the ruins of Illyria was absolute, a profound stillness that carried the weight of three millennia. The violet vortex, once a screaming maw of corruption, had shriveled into a tiny, flickering point of dying light, and then, with a soft, final pop, it vanished entirely. Reality snapped shut, the air in the chamber equalizing with the crisp, clean atmosphere of the outside world.
Elian lay amidst the cooling dust of the titan, his body a map of ruin. The golden glow that had suffused his skin was fading, leaving behind a profound, bone-deep exhaustion. He felt the threads of the Aethelgard—that ancient, complex language of the world’s creation—slowly unspooling from his consciousness, returning to the earth and the sky.
He was cold, but it was the cold of a
