Here, the quantity of energy in motion had to be immeasurable. Yves had never known a wizard or artefact capable of exerting such reach over Adhar, let alone sustaining it. He knew only one other force of such absolute authority; only one other phenomenon of such terrible magnitude and inevitably, and it did not belong to this world. The coming of the Witch Moon.
“Or is there something else?” Yves asked through shallow breath. The hope was very much gone.
Midnight’s left ear flicked towards him, but her gaze remained fixed ahead, still searching.
Yves waited, hands ready to cast at the first indication that the land intended to answer them.
He felt no other presence within or beyond the dune. What he did feel were the faint traces of Adhar overhead, being drawn across the crest of 
. He felt it from within, too; the violation of the boundary between himself and the world, the insistent pull at his own Rothar.
It was distressing how powerful the draw had become. The energy crystals were proof, and at the same time only the beginning of it. Yves had drained them before passing through the Veil, all but one, yet even then, from all that distance, the Adhar stored within them had submitted to the pull more readily than to him. Yves had held the crystals directly in his palm, and still their energy had bled away from his grasp.
That should not be possible. Crystal matrices were sealed by design. Their enchantments existed for the sole purpose of containing and isolating Adhar, which was to separate what was stored within from every external influence. For something to overcome that containment meant that the force exerting the draw exceeded both the crystals’ making and the enchantments that governed it. It was stronger than the craft that held Adhar within the artefact. Stronger, too, than the boundary between what was Yves and what was not. 
took from him as it took from the crystals. By proximity and time, it would unmake him.
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