Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Ghost Pack
The sensation of a thousand minds slamming into a single skull was not a metaphor; for Roric, it was a physical agony that threatened to liquefy his very soul. Inside the Heart of the Ship, he arched his back, his mouth opening in a silent, jagged scream as the amethyst gauntlet on his arm flared with a blinding, incandescent intensity. He was no longer just a man standing in a bone-cathedral; he was the lightning rod for an entire species, the singular point of contact between a dying biological race and a cold, digital eternity.
