Book One – Chapter 14

The moment she heard the voice, Midnight’s focus broke. She reeled, her essence unravelling into the vastness that surrounded her. No longer confined to a core that simply received impulses from her darkness, her being stretched outward, a tidal wave of sensation that swallowed the world. It was a revelation that both intoxicated and terrified her. She was everywhere, her presence diffused into the smallest cracks of the mountain, the faintest breaths of air. And yet, she was insubstantial, unmoored, the singularity of her mind unravelling and her very sense of self slipping away.

The mountain was no longer something she observed — she was becoming it. Her awareness flowed into the stone veins of the Albweiss, into the faint hum of frosthearts buried deep beneath the ice, into the residual tension of cracks forming in the Snowtrail. She was part of everything.

She was nothing becoming not.

A wave of panic surged through her. Midnight clawed her way inward, fighting to hold onto the thread of herself. She forced her focus back, retreating from the pull of the infinite. One by one, she severed her connection to all she touched: the orichs with their purposeful descent, the seal’s pulsating frosthearts, the potent mountain currents, and the essence within the golem. Each tether fell away as she focused, shrinking back into the singularity of her own mind, where there was only her. Just her. Her, and sometimes the voice.

Midnight concentrated on the sharp edges of her thoughts, on her singular purpose. The wizard was dead. Whatever this stranger existence within the golem was, it was not something she could understand now. The orichs were approaching. She let go of the vastness that threatened to consume her, pulling herself together, though the echoes of all she had perceived still reverberated through her mind. The overwhelming clarity began to recede like the tide, leaving her redefined and resolute.