POV: Arken
The void-walker did not return.
Arken stood at the center of his obsidian war chamber, the air around him vibrating with restrained fury. The spires of the Black Citadel groaned beneath the pressure of his power — ancient stone cracking in thin, weeping fractures along the floor.
One by one, the other links of the summoning circle went dark.
Dead.
Destroyed.
Erased.
Only one thread still trembled faintly in the dark — the fleeing assassin, scrambling blindly through the shadow paths to return to him.
Arken lifted a single finger.
The void itself split open.
The last walker slammed into existence on the chamber floor in a ripple of smoke and broken form, its shape unstable, fragments of shadow peeling away like burned paper.
It knelt.
“I failed… my lord.”
Arken’s eye
