For the first time since awakening the Frostfire Domain…
Ethan felt silence.
Not the tense, brittle quiet of a world bracing for collapse.
Not the suffocating pressure of celestial scrutiny.
True silence.
The ocean was calm.
The sky was whole.
The System was no longer screaming warnings in the back of his mind.
It was… steady.
He stood at the edge of the shattered coastline where the Seventh Descent had nearly torn the atmosphere apart. The land still bore scars—glass-cratered earth, crystallized lightning marks, frozen tidal fractures—but none of it was spreading.
Nothing was unraveling.
Kaelith approached from behind, boots crunching lightly over frost-hardened sand. Her shadowflame was dim, contained, controlled in a way it hadn't been before.
"You're still connected," she said quietly.
It wasn't a question.
Ethan nodded.
"All seven."
He could feel them distinctly now—not as wild forces fighting for dominance, but as seven pillars holding up an unseen structure.
