A thread.
Thinner than before, but closer now. Like it had remembered him. Like it hadn't severed—it had just... receded.
His breath hitched slightly.
'There.'
He reached for it—not with fingers, not even with thought, but with alignment. Letting the hum of mana pass through his lungs, letting the rhythm build like a heartbeat beneath his own.
Then—voices.
"…shen rae-tir…"
Low. Beneath the breath. Beneath the hum.
"…veilth sah…"
His eyes snapped open.
And the world shifted.
RUMBLE.
A deep, distant vibration trembled up through the earth, shaking through his legs, his spine, his teeth. The motes scattered instantly, flickering outward like birds from a snapped branch.
RUMBLE.
The sound grew louder—no, closer.
Not sound. Pressure.
He turned slowly, head rising toward the far edge of the plateau.
There it was.
The sky cracked with silence, and the horizon buckled beneath weight too immense for comprehension.
The colossus.
It moved again.
