The whispers began in the spaces between worlds, in the cracks where reality bled into unreality, in the liminal zones where beings gathered to trade information, rumors, and fears. They started as murmurs, uncertain and questioning, but within what passed for hours or days—time remained negotiable in these boundary spaces—they had grown into a roar of speculation that echoed across dimensions.
*The Flame Queen lives.*
*The one who destroyed the thrones has returned.*
*But she is changed.*
*Corrupted.*
*Wrong.*
Dante first heard the whispers while trying to free Selena from the revenants' binding. The damned souls still pressed around them, their bone-marrow forms creating a wall of desperate need that wouldn't yield no matter how fiercely his storm raged. But now, between the revenants' prayers and pleas, he caught fragments of something else—voices from beyond the void, from the realms they had thought to visit, carrying news that made his blood run cold.
