After the word left the Unwritten Beast's mouth, the Graveyard went silent.
It was not the silence of an empty place. It was the silence of a crowd that has suddenly stopped breathing. The wind died. The faint rattle of loose bones along the ridges ceased. Even the roar that had rolled up from the depths, low and ancient and so full of grief, faded until Aether could hear his own pulse in his ears.
Aether slowly lifted his head and turned his attention to the sound that had come before the silence.
"That wasn't the First Beast," he said quietly.
"No," Kael agreed. "And it wasn't a normal beast, either. Normal beasts don't roar from underground."
"Underground?"
Kael crouched and laid his palm against the pale soil. The Duskwalker Beast stepped silently beside him and lowered its head, and for a moment the two of them stayed perfectly still, listening in the way only shadow-bound creatures could.
