The silence in Valakar's hall didn't fade quickly. It sat there in the air like a blade resting against a throat, sharp and waiting, and every cultist who still had breath enough to whisper pressed themselves flatter to the ground, as if that could protect them from words they weren't meant to hear in the first place.
The weight of it lingered even after the gods themselves had gone quiet, pressing down until the only sound left was the broken rhythm of prayer muttered by lips too cracked to hold steady.
Far away from that chamber of bone and smoke, outside any place mortals could walk or even gods could fully claim as their own, another realm began to stir.
