The silence in the obsidian prison he had built to shelter his mind was now different. It was no longer an endless, stagnant pool, but the held breath before a thunderclap. The chains of will that bound Telmus, once thrumming with corrosive energy, now felt like faint, decaying threads.
He could feel the edges of his own body, a distant, forgotten sensation like a limb waking from sleep. Telmus had not been aware when this sensation began, but he knew that after he mastered his Destiny and went further, his soul began to yearn for the touch of his flesh, and this connection was silently made.
Across from him, Xylos, the Primordial Demon, had not taken its form as a serpent or a shrouded man. It was a simple, humanoid shape of shifting smoke and embers, its star-eyes dim. Their debate, their millennia of discourse, had reached its inevitable conclusion. The terms were set.
