Somewhere very far away, inside a dark, murky cave, shadows clung to the damp stone like a living entity.
The ground beneath was soft with thick mud, and water dripped steadily from the jagged ceiling, each droplet echoing with unnaturally long reverberations through the suffocating silence. The air hung heavy, murky with the scent of wet mineral and lingering decay.
A bone-chilling, crazed laugh suddenly tore through the quiet.
"Hahaha… *yes!*"
The laughter faded, swallowed by a long, tense stretch of silence where only the rhythmic dripping of water remained.
"Ah… yes. This just got even more interesting," the voice mused, sounding far more deranged than the laugh that preceded it. "I knew letting go was the right choice. And that voice… ahhh. This will be worth the wait."
*
Out on the open ice, Nova's words hung heavy in the freezing air.
A bite of cold wind swept past, rustling Maxwell's hair and forcing a shiver down his spine, though he barely registered it. He was too busy contemplating how to explain what he had experienced without driving Nova past her breaking point.
"Why aren't you answering?" Nova frowned, her gaze piercing. "Just tell me what happened, exactly as it went down, and I'll understand." She offered a small, impatient sigh.
"Alright, if you say so," Maxwell replied, a faint smile touching his lips. "It all began several decades ago—"
Nova shot him a dark glare, her fists clenching at her sides. "Get to the point."
"Alright, alright!" Maxwell laughed, holding his hands up defensively. "Just trying to lighten the mood."
"Not needed."
"I can see that."
Scooping up a handful of fresh snow, Maxwell began rolling it into a compact ball. "It started the exact moment I laid eyes on that diagram you drew." He gestured toward the strange symbol Nova had etched into the snow earlier. "The second I looked at it, it felt like the entire world just paused."
He shivered, the memory alone sending a chill deeper than the freezing climate.
"Everything stopped," he continued, rolling the snowball between his hands. "Then came the whispers. They were everywhere—above me, below me, to my left, to my right. Every single direction. Even you were whispering."
Nova's brow furrowed tightly. "I was whispering?"
"Yeah. You were whispering with this completely dead, lifeless look in your eyes," Maxwell confirmed. For a split second, he thought he caught Nova flinching. Am I seeing things, or did she just shiver?
Clearing his throat, he pushed past the thought. "And that wasn't even the part that made me sweat. What came next was what gave me real chills."
As he twirled the snowball in his palm, an irresistible impulse took hold, and he suddenly hurled it straight toward Snowy.
Swoosh!
The snowball cut through the air with sharp accuracy, heading directly for the white hawk. Snowy merely glanced at the incoming projectile, took a single, effortless step to the side, and dodged it entirely. The bird shook his head slowly, casting a deeply unimpressed look back at Maxwell.
"Would you just focus and stop messing around?!" Nova snapped, a red vein pulsing at the side of her forehead.
"Relax," Maxwell smiled before turning serious again. "The worst part was when I started to feel like I could actually *understand* what those whispers were saying. So, I tried to listen."
He paused, letting the silence weigh on them.
"Big mistake," Maxwell said quietly.
"The exact moment I tried to tune into them, pain exploded inside my head."
Nova raised an eyebrow, her tone shifting to raw curiosity. "Pain?"
"Yeah. Unnatural, overwhelming pain." Maxwell hugged his arms tightly around himself as the memory surfaced. "I don't even know how to describe it properly. It was magnified to a degree that felt completely unreal. Thinking became impossible. Moving was out of the question. I tried to scream, but no sound came out. I tried to cry out, but nothing happened. All I could do was lie there and feel every second of it while my mind ripped itself apart."
Nova watched him with an intense expression. "How did it stop?"
"I'm still confused about that part," Maxwell admitted. "One minute I was writhing on the ground, and the next, I heard a voice. Then I snapped right back here."
"A voice?"
"Yeah. The moment it spoke the words 'BE GONE,' everything ceased instantly. The pain, the whispers—all of it vanished the second that voice rang out. And that's pretty much where it ended."
Maxwell pushed himself up off the ground and stretched his back, wincing slightly at how sore his muscles felt.
"This is bigger than I thought," Nova murmured, her eyes distant.
"Way bigger."
Maxwell nodded, his expression darkening as he looked at her.
"We can probably assume the Primordial was responsible for the whispers," Nova reasoned after a moment.
"I think so too," Maxwell agreed.
"Which leaves the voice that came after," she continued. "We know absolutely nothing about whatever produced it."
"It sounded like it was trying to help me, but—"
Maxwell's sentence was cut short.
Without warning, the searing, agonizing sensation on his back flared back to life—far worse than it had ever been before.