And then came the voice.
Not from above.
Not from below.
But from within.
"… Dragon of The Beginning… Basukhi, you've returned... Brother"
The voice was not loud but felt.
Like pressure on the spine. Like a thought you didn't think, whispering in your skull.
Everyone flinched.
"Who are you?"
The voice answered, slow and deliberate.
"Who... I am?"
The tentacles did not move.
The eye remained open.
And yet, it felt like the sea itself was exhaling.
"I am the one left behind. I am what endures when the World was Overwritten, a memory of what was not allowed to be; I was bleeding, chained by an unseen force, and the sky was shaking as I tried to reach you, but I failed... I'm Lembuswana, or what remains of me"
A silence fell, not empty, but crushing.
As if reality itself was trying to deny the words it just heard.
No one spoke. Not at first.
