The marble beneath our boots didn't shatter; it dissolved into gray dust.Elara didn't flinch as the floor gave way. Her small hand remained locked in mine, her warm fingers holding steady against the cold, crystal texture of my skin. Upward momentum seized us—not the erratic blast of an explosion, but a localized gravity inversion. The dark air of the underworld shafts whipped past my face, snapping my long, platinum-tipped hair behind me like a war banner.Beside us, Umbra ran on air. The six-legged shadow panther leaped from phantom ledge to phantom ledge, its golden and blue runes pulsing with a quiet, lethal rhythm. It didn't growl. It didn't hunt for stray mana. Its two glowing violet eyes were fixed straight up, tracking the crimson light bleeding down through the earth.We burst through the bedrock of the Whispering Graveyard.The valley was gone. The jagged black marble headstones, the petrified roots of the First Born, the fallen armor of Terros—all of it had been ground int