The light receded, and sound returned like the slow heartbeat of the world.
Lindarion stood on smooth marble, ancient, polished, unmarked by age. Around him stretched a vast hall of impossible geometry, its walls curving like the inside of a shell. Thin golden lines pulsed through the stone, veins of mana still alive after millennia. The air smelled faintly of ash and rain.
Ashwing hovered, eyes wide, wings half-folded. "This… isn't a ruin," he whispered. "It's like they built it yesterday."
Lindarion's gaze swept the chamber. "No dust. No decay. This place was sealed by time itself." He reached out and brushed a column, his touch made it hum softly, the mana veins brightening as though recognizing him.
At the center of the hall stood a dais shaped like an open hand, fingers curved upward. Suspended above it, weightless, floated a crystal sphere the size of a man's head. Inside it swirled faint gold mist, pulsing faintly in rhythm with Lindarion's own heartbeat.
