Noah gazed across the Gilded Ones with boundless Tyranny, and his heart began to beat!
DUM!
DUM!
DUM!
It was not a ridiculous metaphor for nerves. He felt it in his chest, a single heavy beat that did not belong entirely to his body, and the sound of it boomed outward across Chernobyl, a drum struck once and then again, the rhythm spreading across the reborn Observable Existence with a resonance that should not have been possible.
His gaze settled particularly on Luxanna, and as the drum of his heart sounded, he felt something he had not felt before. The beat of his heart resonated with Chernobyl itself, the Observable Existence answering the rhythm as though his heart and its foundations were the same instrument played by the same hand.
