Chapter 43
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
The darkness is so complete that I shudder, my bones once again chilled. But this time, I’m not afraid. This time, I don’t let the darkness overtake me.
I sink into it, and it cradles me close. I stride through the shadowless obsidian, pulled forward and forward still. Curious, whispery, feather-light touches brush against my skin and I shudder, goosebumps covering my flesh.
A light flares in the dark. A golden, ethereal light that seems all the brighter because of the void that surrounds it.
And now, there are shadows. They twist unnaturally, forming fleeting shapes.
Eyes blink, claws reach, and faces leer before becoming the shadows once again.
Silhouettes sweep from overhead, creatures too vast and too indistinct for my mortal mind to comprehend.
But those creatures—they’re not for me.
Another light flares, glowing from cracks in the ground this time, a silvery glow running through veins of the void. It highlights towering structures that are jagged and asymmetrical, both ancient and impossibly timeless.
Murmuring surrounds me, tangled up in a language I don’t understand but that is somehow familiar. The murmurs are interrupted by growls and howls and hisses.
Where the air at the peak of Elandors Veil was thin and cool, the air here is dense and heavy, and it presses against my chest like it’s trying to push me out. There’s a cloying, sweet aroma, and the faint, musty scent of time itself. As though nothing living need breathe here.
The ground shifts as I walk, crumbling and reshaping at will. Like it’s rejecting me, trying to push me off course. Or maybe push me forward.
I stop in front of one of the shadows, and obsidian eyes stare back at me from the void.
“I’ve waited for you, Strider.”