The air went heavy, a weight pressing into my chest. My vision darkened at the edges as a familiar pull clawed at my mind, something old and lingering, something I had felt before in the presence of the rift. It wasn't just some remnant of magic drifting through the ruin. No, this was something worse.
The thing behind us had shifted. No longer just a flicker at our backs—it was ahead.
Materializing in our path.
Asterion sucked in a sharp breath, stumbling back a step. My hand had already dropped to my sword.
The chamber stretched around us, vast but claustrophobic, its damp stone walls lined with sigils that barely flickered in protest of the entity's presence. The thing took form at the center, swirling into existence like ink spilled in water. It pulsed—wrong, inconsistent, flickering from one shape to another—sometimes humanoid, sometimes monstrous, sometimes nothing but a smear of emptiness against the world. It did not belong here.