Ilyra proposed what the gods never could.
"Stop holding it closed," she said. "Let it breathe."
Kael stared at her. "That could destroy everything."
"Yes," she admitted. "Or it could integrate."
She explained her theory slowly: the seal was rigid, binary closed or broken. But humanity had changed. Soul-structure had evolved. The dead were no longer conquerors.
What lay beyond the void fed on imbalance.
Starve it by removing extremes.
Not suppression.
Assimilation.
Kael felt something crack inside him.
Not the seal.
His fear.