Kaelen's foot touched the dead earth.
And the world vanished.
He was floating.
No ground beneath him, no sky above him. Nothing but an endless white expanse that stretched in every direction, infinite and empty. He tried to move his arms, his legs, but his body felt weightless, disconnected from any sense of up or down.
'Where am I?'
The bond hummed in his chest, louder than ever before. It pulled him forward, through the white void, toward something he couldn't see but could feel. A presence. Vast and ancient and terrible. its presence incomprehensable.
He turned.
And he saw it.
The beast was sleeping.
It was so enormous that Kaelen could not comprehend its full shape. His mind struggled to process what his eyes were seeing, trying to impose order on something that defied all understanding.
