Ren stepped squarely in front of the frozen Tamer. He stared into the translucent, wind-aspected crystal forming the man's chest cavity.
He had to do this completely blind. No second test runs and no luxury of having been successful on a fully formed statue a first time.
A successful time.
But the hesitation vanished. Ren drove his hand forward, plunging the core directly into the statue's chest.
The ruins reacted instantly. It possessed the rigid, undeniable logic of an ancient mechanism finally receiving the correct gear. A deep, resonant hum vibrated through the floorboards. The dormant runes carved into the walls of the tenth chamber flared to life, shifting from a dull gray to a blinding, active glow.
The ambient mana in the air violently reorganized itself, releasing some of the anchoring onto the newly established focal point in the center of the statue.
