Elena POV
The moment my palm touched the edge of it, I understood why no one had ever survived asking it a question instead of giving it an order.
It didn't answer in words. It answered in everyone.
"Elena?" Adrian's voice, distant, like it was coming through water.
"I'm here." I wasn't sure that was true anymore. "I'm still here."
Are you, something asked, threaded through a hundred other voices at once. Voices that did not sound cruel, just tired.
"I'm asking you something," I said out loud, so the room could hear it even if only the entity could truly understand it.
"Not telling. Just asking. What do you want?"
There was silence, at first, then the voices came all together, fast, overlapping: a woman begging for her children and a man laughing at something that had been cut out of him and a child asking, over and over, if anyone was coming.
"One at a time," I said. "Please. I can only hold so much."
It slowed. Not because I had ordered it to, but because I had asked.
