The sound that rose from beneath the lockbox chamber was not loud, but it carried a force that made the bones of the room seem to tighten around it. Fang felt it first as a low vibration through the platform under his boots, then as a pressure behind his eyes, then as a cold thread slipping down into the roots of his spine.
Ren's hand was already on his wrist.
Not to restrain him. To steady him.
The black crystal pillars around the room brightened in sequence, their glow deepening from a faint violet to something colder and more intense, like moonlight filtered through bruised glass. The hum beneath the floor became a note now, steady and deliberate, as though the chamber had given a command and whatever lay below had chosen to obey.
Pax looked from the console to the floor with a sharp, suspicious frown. "That was not a random response."
Wolf's blade was already half-drawn. "No one said it was."
