Notifications started arriving before Noah had taken ten steps into the dark beyond the scorch mark.
[BEAST CORE ACQUIRED]
[BEAST CORE ACQUIRED]
[BEAST CORE ACQUIRED]
He stopped walking and watched them stack, one after another, faster than he could read each individually, the count climbing in his peripheral vision while the tunnel ahead stayed silent and dark and showed him absolutely nothing.
[BEAST CORES ACQUIRED: 47]
'Storm,' he thought. 'That's him. Has to be. I'm not getting these.'
He kept moving, faster now, Ivy gliding low behind him through a tunnel that had widened enough for her wings, and the notifications kept coming in clusters of three and five and ten, the count climbing past a hundred before he'd covered another quarter mile.
[BEAST CORES ACQUIRED: 134]
