Elara POV
The darkness didn't feel like fainting.
It felt like falling.
Like someone had scooped the ground out from under me and dropped me into a place without walls, without air, without anything to hold on to but the echo of my own heartbeat.
Except…
It wasn't echoing.
It was being answered.
A second pulse thudded somewhere in the dark — deep, slow, older than bone. Not inside me. Not outside me. Around me. Wrapping. Listening. Waiting.
Then a whisper slid through the black like fingertips brushing the back of my neck.
"Elara."
My breathing hitched.
Not Theron's voice.
Not Kaelen's.
Something colder. Something too familiar in the wrong way — like remembering a dream you forgot you dreamed.
I tried to move. My limbs felt like they were filled with sand.
My voice cracked. "Who are you?"
The dark exhaled.
"Anchor."
My stomach twisted. "Stop calling me that."
A low hum rolled through the void — not angry exactly… amused.
"Then stop answering to it."
