บท 276: • The Bridge Hath Broken

Spheris recognized this dream.

The dense air, the pitch-black obscurity stretched endlessly around him, the gray smoke coiling in its void. He took a step — an unsure yet involuntary step, and each time he took more of these steps, the gray smoke billowed out of the dark ground beneath his feet.

Truly, he recognized this dream, as surely as he recognized his own heartbeat, but the darkness around him refused to succumb, and even [Nocturnal Perception] couldn't pierce through the shadows.

For the first time, the darkness defied him, offering no clarity, no comfort, as though there was a greater being that it answered to.

And indeed there was.

The voice came through the quiet veil, it didn't pierce the silence like sound normally would, but rather existed within it, calm and familiar. Bearing no malice at all in its depth, yet terrifying in a manner that felt natural.