The sterilization of the laboratory was absolute. Against the backdrop of shattered glass, blood-slicked metal, and the grey ash of the Prototype, Malakor stood like a monument to cold reason. He adjusted his spectacles, the fluorescent lights overhead—miraculously still flickering—glinting off the lenses.
He looked less like a sorcerer or a tyrant and more like a man who had spent his life counting the cost of souls in a ledger.
"Master Malakor," Lucien whispered again. The name hung in the air, heavy and jagged.
Lucien's posture, usually that of a defiant king, was hunched. The hand that held his greatsword—the blade that had cleaved through armies—was visibly shaking.
Gwen stood between them, her hair bone-white and her eyes still swirling with the black void of the Necromancy she had just consumed. She felt the heat of the Sun fighting the chill of the Grave within her, but both were eclipsed by the sudden, freezing realization of the dynamic before her.
