As the last of the black sludge vanished into the ring, the room was revealed in its raw, skeletal state—ancient, gray stone that had been hidden for eons. The oppressive, light-eating atmosphere was gone. The air felt thin, empty.
Anne finally retracted her threads, though her hand remained near her hip. She stepped closer, looking at the pristine gray floor where the Nightmare Claw's legacy had just been erased.
"You've changed," she said, her voice a mix of fascination and genuine fear. "In all my years, I have never seen a jump in power that felt so... absolute. You didn't just grow stronger, Ethan. You became something else entirely."
Ethan stood up, clenching his fist. And the air itself seemed to shatter. A dull, rhythmic crack-crack-crack echoed through the cavern—not from the walls, but from the very space surrounding his knuckles. The vibrations were so intense that the loose pebbles on the floor disintegrated into fine powder.
