Sterling's Dimensional Ring lay quietly in his palm, cool to the touch.
Ian didn't immediately check the items inside, nor was he overcome with ecstatic relief.
He simply sat inside the stone house, listening to the faint hum of the Source Annihilation Array as it operated, and the sound of his own steady, almost mechanical, breathing.
He had his revenge.
That man—Sterling Vance, who had been so high and mighty in the Furnace encampment, whose single thought had forced him to flee for his life and nearly die in the Silent Death Mountain Range—was dead.
He had died by his Ice and Fire Spiral, in this unknown, black stone forest.
The elation he'd expected never came. Instead, a strange emptiness settled in his heart.
It was like punching a thick wad of cotton. After the muffled thud, only an empty echo remained.
"Ga?" Gaga poked its head out from the shadows, its mismatched gray and blue eyes filled with confusion.
