" Everyone — "
Kei heard the Umbra High Cleric's voice get that far .
And then his consciousness was not in the fissure anymore .
It was pulled — not drifting , not fading , but taken , wrenched inward along a line he had no say in , the glade and the bloodglow and the thin seam of trunk between his fissure and Asp's all collapsing away at once — and Kei found himself standing in the Mind Palace , the large hall of it around him , the silence of the place absolute after the noise he had been pulled out of .
" What happened ? " Kei asked .
Epoch answered , and here in the palace the voice was fully audible , not the VDU-text of the outside world but a voice in a room .
