Ren slotted the final core into the empty circular depression on the colossal door.
The heavy, swirling sphere of Wind and Earth seated perfectly into the stone. It fit with the flawless, airtight precision of a mechanism designed for that exact, microscopic tolerance.
For one agonizing heartbeat, absolutely nothing happened.
Then, the ancient stone reacted. It was the exact same phenomenon Sirius had witnessed years ago, ten chambers above, when he had used the slightly dragonified shadow wolf guardian core to breach the ruin's outer gates.
The door didn't simply push the core inward, nor did mechanical gears grind to lock it into place. The solid stone drank it. The heavy sphere seemed to liquefy, dissolving directly into the monolithic slab. At the exact same moment, the other two embedded spheres, the pulsing Light and Darkness core, and the swirling Fire and Water core, suffered the exact same fate.
