The rain was a brutal sculptor, relentlessly hammering at the granite face of the rock formation. Elias barely registered it, his focus entirely consumed by the narrow crevice that had revealed itself just hours before – a jagged wound in the stone overlooking Port Blossom. The wind howled like a tormented spirit, whipping spray against his exposed skin and stinging his eyes, but he pressed on, chanting the fragmented syllables of ‘the siren’s call,’ a phrase scraped onto the wooden serpent fragment held tightly in his numb fingers.
Each syllable was an effort, a desperate plea directed at the darkness within the crevice. The air thrummed with a faint vibration, growing stronger with each repetition, accompanied by flashes of light – not sunlight, but something colder, more ethereal, that pulsed like a dying star. Silas stood silently a few feet away, his dark coat pulled tight against the storm, observing Elias with an unsettling stillness. His face was impassive, almost unnaturally so, and his eyes held a depth that made Elias instinctively wary.
