"So... Uncle Leo is digging too deep?" Seraphina asked, her dark eyes wide with genuine concern. "If he keeps digging, he's going to wake up a really bad bug? And the bad bug will hurt him?"
"Precisely, little one," Lord Ignis nodded grimly. "We cannot speak to the living. Our voices cannot pierce the veil of the mundane. But you... you can hear us. You have the ear of the Reaper. Kaelus possesses the authority and the wisdom to stop Leonidas before he breaches the seal."
Seraphina stood up, her small hands balling into determined fists. The pink ember-puppy, disturbed from its nap, tumbled onto the rug with a sleepy whine, shaking its fluffy head.
"I have to tell Papa," Seraphina declared firmly. She wasn't just doing it because it was a quest; she genuinely liked the loud, boisterous Fire Archduke. Anyone who gave her a pink puppy and teased Kaelus so effectively deserved to be saved from an ancient subterranean doom. "I have to tell him to stop Uncle Leo from digging the hole."
