The Void Echo was still smiling.
It was the smile that made everything worse — not the cold, predatory grin of something that had come to destroy, but the soft, wondering expression of a child who has finally, after an immeasurably long search, found what it was looking for. The ancient guardians of Elarion did not know how to fight a smile. Their wings were spread, their voices raised in frequencies that bent stone and shattered lesser authorities, their combined presence pressing against the outer boundary of the Silent World with the weight of ages. And the Void Echo stood at that boundary and smiled, and the smile was more unsettling than any assault could have been.
Beneath Elarion, something stirred.
