The whispers of the past still lingered in Elira's mind as she stepped out from behind the library ruins. Her hands trembled with the residual aftershocks of the stone's echo—those otherworldly voices calling out her name, those speaking of the Aetherion lineage, and of the one "beneath the mark of the void."
Kael hadn't spoken a word since they'd left the hidden corridor. The silence between them was oppressive, not because it felt awkward, but because it felt weighted—with secrets, with the weight of fate, with the vibration of something ancient stirring in the marrow of the academy.
"Elira," Kael said finally, catching her on the spiral staircase at the exit of the catacombs. "What you heard… what we heard. You can't tell anyone. Not yet."
"Do you know what that was?" Her voice was barely more than a whisper, as if she feared the stones would wake again if she spoke too loudly.
