Chapter 43: A Voice
The silence between one roar and the next was as thick as the darkness that pervaded the ruins. The cursed city seemed alive—not in the usual sense, but with a rotten, whispering consciousness.
Each step was an affront. Each breath, a provocation.
Eren stood where the remains of an ancient arch held cracked columns harboring fungi that pulsed red.
Kaela guarded the left flank, her senses on high alert, growling softly.
Nyssa stayed close to him, her body jittering with nerves.
Morwynn, above, wove threads of vigilance between broken pillars.
"They’re surrounding us," she warned. "They sense our presence. They don’t need to see... just to know that we’re alive."
The ground trembled with dry, hollow steps. The apparitions were reorganizing, more aggressively. It was no longer just a horde: it was a siege. Eren furrowed his brow, calculating escape routes and survival chances. They weren’t good.
That’s when he heard it.
A voice.
A line of sound cutting through the chaos.
It wasn’t a scream, nor a word. It was like a whispered thought inside his mind—cold, clear, and impossible to ignore.