The Void-Chambers were not merely cells; carved deep into the foundation of the North. Here, sound did not just fade—it died. Time was not a progression, but an anchor, a heavy, suffocating weight dragging against the soul.
Gwen was cast into the abyss, her golden aura stripped away by the heavy, leaden shackles that locked her wrists in a cold, eternal grip.
She sat on the damp stone, the silence pressing against her eardrums until they hummed. Her mind was a fractured mirror, reflecting the events of the altar chamber. She kept seeing the image of her aunt, Elara—the woman she had mourned for a decade—standing there, cold, hollow, and speaking with a chorus of voices that sounded like grinding tectonic plates.
"Elara," Gwen whispered to the darkness. "How are you here? I buried you. I held the urn."
"I am where the Law requires me to be," a voice drifted from the corridor, devoid of warmth.
Gwen snapped her head toward the iron-grated door.
