Darkness did not swallow Elaria.

It exhaled her.

She rose into it like a breath the world had forgotten it was holding—weightless, untethered, suspended in something softer than shadow but deeper than any night she’d ever known. A kind of pre-existence. A hush before a thought.

The last thing she remembered from the collapsing light was Kael-Draven’s voice—splitting, reforming, cracking like an old spell peeling apart under its own age.

“Something is waking behind you.”

And then ...