Darkness.
Not the absence of light, but something thicker, older. A presence that pressed against Ian's skin, seeping into bone and breath, without temperature, without time.
And yet… he could see.
Shapes moved—shadows that breathed, curled like smoke and refused form. They parted slowly, reverently, like curtains at a cathedral.
Then came the voice.
Not heard, but felt, like breath against the soul.
"You sleep in chains, Prophet."
Ian's pulse flickered.
Across the blackened plain stood a figure—not a man, not quite.
Tall, robed in threads that bled into the void around him. His face was wrapped in funeral cloth, and from beneath it glowed faint pinpricks of silver light, like dying stars.
The entity lifted a hand. With it, the void shifted.
A thousand whispering tongues echoed behind him—echoes of names that had long been forgotten.
Was he dead? Ian didn't question it.
Hardly mattered now.
