The tremors from the cracking marrow core had barely begun to settle when the darkness above them changed. What had been empty void, the space between existence and nothing, suddenly coalesced into something far more purposeful, far more terrible. Selena felt it first through their binding—a cold that went beyond temperature, beyond physical sensation, sinking straight into the essence of what they were.
"Something's coming," she gasped, trying to push herself upright despite the exhaustion that had turned her limbs to lead. "Dante, something—"
The Shadow Court descended.
They came not as individuals but as a singular entity, a unified mass of darkness that held within it every throne's authority, every crown's decree, every judgment that had ever been passed in any realm throughout all of time. This wasn't the scattered manifestation of shadows and decrees they'd fought before—this was coordinated, absolute, the cosmic order's final defense made manifest.
