The Heart Pool, once the crystalline soul of the Whispering Glades, was now a stagnant eye of obsidian ink. The very water seemed to have died the moment Kaelen's boots touched its surface. The bioluminescent silver of the Glades flickered and died, replaced by a suffocating, violet-tinged darkness that radiated from the Shadow King like a physical weight.
The entity wearing Kaelen's face stood in the center of the black water, the stolen shard of the Mother-Lode hovering just above his open palm. It pulsed with a necrotic heartbeat, a rhythmic thud-thud that echoed the sound of the mountain's collapse. Kaelen's white hair was a stark, ghostly halo against the blackness, and his eyes—the abyss-like voids—were fixed on me with a hunger that was no longer about a mate bond. It was the hunger of the Void wanting to swallow the Sun.
