Chapter 8

Resonance.

Echoes.

Step one—sever the link.

That was the priority. Before anything else. Before thinking too hard about what had found me, before letting panic set in. I needed to sever the link. Carefully. Precisely. Without making things worse.

I forced a breath into my lungs, steadying my thoughts. The Astral Nexus pulsed around me, the connection between it and the Sleeper tightening like a coiled wire. I could feel it—an invisible thread humming with tension, stretching between us.

Step two—understand the link.

Blindly cutting it could be dangerous. The presence wasn't attacking me, not yet, but that didn't mean a reckless severance wouldn't trigger... something. Backlash. A reaction. A ripple through whatever space it resided in.

I had to guide the separation, not force it.

Step three—apply control.

I raised a hand. My magic was still there, still pulsing within me, but it resisted my call. I gritted my teeth. It wasn't gone. It wasn't blocked. It was simply... being pulled elsewhere.

No. I couldn't allow that. Not again.

I focused, reaching for the connection itself—the place where my magic and the Sleeper's awareness overlapped. It felt vast, unfathomable, stretching through the cracks of reality. But there were patterns. Faint, barely perceptible, but there.

Step four—disrupt the resonance.

I altered my magic's flow, shifting the frequency. Magic had rhythm, patterns, a signature. I just had to make mine... incompatible. A shift in energy, a discord in the harmony. If I did it right, the link would fade instead of snap. If I did it wrong...

Well, I'd rather not think about that.

Step five—release.

A slow exhale. A final adjustment. The connection wavered, unspooling, unraveling—not with a severed snap but with a gradual dissolution. The pressure in my skull lightened. The weight of its awareness lessened. The Sleeper lingered, its presence watching, but the link was no longer holding us together.

I barely had time to feel relieved.

Because the Sleeper did not appreciate my efforts.

A wave of force slammed into my spellwork, swatting my careful adjustments aside like a child kicking over a sandcastle. The link constricted, snapping back toward me with all the grace of a collapsing star.

My breath hitched. I braced.

It was stronger. It was faster.

Oh, come on.

I tried again, shifting my magic further out of sync, forcing an imbalance—but it was like wrestling the tide with a teaspoon. The Sleeper's awareness loomed, pressing in, unwavering.

The link wasn't breaking.

It was adapting.

I wasn't severing it—I was teaching it how to hold on tighter.

Realization settled like ice in my veins. This thing was learning. Watching me. Adjusting. And it had decided I was interesting enough to keep.

The sheer scope of its presence pressed against my mind, an incomprehensible vastness stretching beyond sense or reason. It wasn't just aware of me—it was examining me. Not with malice. Not with rage.

With curiosity.

That was worse.

My efforts were a joke. A futile attempt to push back the tide with a single, trembling hand. Compared to it, I was a flickering ember before an endless abyss. A single drop of water against an ocean. A loose thread dangling in the presence of something that could unravel me with a thought.

And I had shaken it awake.

It settled its attention on me, truly and fully, and I knew—this is what they mean when they say not to stare into the abyss.

Step six—

…I was out of steps.