The elder stood at the edge of shadow.
His face was still veiled, every line of his body wrapped in robes that shifted like smoke clinging to flesh.
Even his hands—those pale, skeletal instruments of will—remained hidden, sleeves trailing across stone as if they feared to reveal what they once wrought. He did not step closer, not yet. He only watched.
Watched Atlas.
Watched the three demon kings, each seated below the mortal, though each was sovereign of his own fief, master of his own lands, ruler of legions that bent knee to none. Yet here they were—like chained wolves crouched beneath a firebrand they could neither consume nor ignore.
The elder's mind unfolded in silence, not to Atlas but to the others—his kin, the elders cloistered in the deep sanctums of the Fourth Layer. His voice slipped into the hive of their communion, a whisper of both awe and warning:
The Chosen one.... has come.
