When the light finally faded, I was no longer in the throne room.
Silence swallowed everything.
The ground beneath my feet was black and cold. It wasn't stone, or metal, or anything that should've existed.
It pulsed faintly, like a living thing.
Above me stretched an endless black void swirling with lightning clouds that flashed once every few seconds, throwing everything into brief, blinding relief before plunging it back into darkness.
Each bolt of lightning revealed fractured patches of color suspended in the black — glimpses of places that didn't belong here. Forests. Ruins. Fire. Shadows.
The space around me shifted each time I blinked, like the realm itself couldn't decide what it wanted to be.
I was breathing hard, my chest rising and falling with each ragged breath. Damon was silent in my head for once, only watching, waiting.
Then I heard it.
A chuckle.
It was low. Mocking. Rolling through the dark like thunder.
