The darkness here was not the darkness of a Tower.
In a Tower, darkness pressed in, watching, filled with hidden enemies and ancient mana. This darkness was simpler. It was the darkness of stone and silence, a place that had never known sunlight.
The chamber stretched upward into shadow, its ceiling lost beyond the torchlight. Stone pillars rose like petrified trees, their surfaces worn smooth by centuries of water. The air was cold and still. Somewhere in the dark, water fell with the slow rhythm of a heartbeat.
The Operative knelt on the stone floor.
His grey robes were tattered from the Sunken Depths, burnt where Nathan's arrows had passed too close, torn at the shoulder where Kuro's daggers had found him. His Void Eel was still recovering within his summon mark. He was not injured. The wounds were superficial, and the extraction stone had pulled him out before anything truly damaging could land.
But he was afraid.
