The ground beneath Amara’s feet cracked once more, this time with a sound like the breaking of the world itself. Her breath caught in her throat as the abyss below them seemed to yawn wider, its depths reaching further into the void than she could have ever imagined. The blackness that had been steadily receding, forced back by the shard’s brilliant light, suddenly surged with new energy, as though it had a life of its own.
And in that moment, as the very earth trembled, Amara knew that something darker, something far worse than the entity itself, was coming.
She felt it—a shift in the air, a pressure that seemed to press against her very soul. The shard in her hand pulsed with an almost frantic rhythm, as though it, too, was struggling to understand what was happening. The light that ha
