The black sand of the Whispering Coast was no longer just a graveyard of memories; it was a theater of the divine.
I sat at the edge of the surf, the leaden water of the bay lapping at my bare feet. The salt-water was cold, but it felt like a caress compared to the absolute zero of the Ash-Fortress. Beside me, Leo was breathing in deep, shuddering lungfuls of air, his bronze arm glowing with a faint, rhythmic gold light. He looked at his hands—human skin and bronze metal—as if he were trying to remember how they worked. He had been a prisoner of the Void, a filter for a god's grief, and yet he was the only one who seemed to have retained his humanity through the ordeal.
