A sound rose within my skull. Not the system's crisp chime. Something far more ancient. A resonant voice intoning syllables in a tongue that had been old when the first seas were still boiling. Words that carried the taste of creation's first breath.
I did not comprehend the phonemes. Yet the meaning pierced me like lightning through marrow.
[COVENANT ACCEPTED.
MASTER ACKNOWLEDGED.
BOND ETERNAL.]
For the briefest heartbeat, a vision tore through my mind: a throne wrought of interwoven light and fathomless shadow. Silent attendants whose forms defied geometry. And at the center, a presence so vast it made the systems embedded in my soul feel like children's toys left in the rain.
Then the vision dissolved.
The golden blaze gentled. The runes subsided to a soft, perpetual ember-glow. The ring rested against my finger as though it had always belonged there—as though my hand had spent every previous moment maimed and incomplete, and only now remembered wholeness.
