The temple shook.
At first, it was subtle—like a heartbeat beneath the stone. Then it rose into a low rumble that made the very threads of the Dreamwilds vibrate.
Fenn spun around, blades drawn. "Did we trigger some ancient god-burglar alarm?"
Pennrick's eyes flicked toward the crumbling pillars. "No. This is something else. A summoning."
Lys's face grew grave. "It knows she's awakened."
Eloryn didn't move. She stood perfectly still, eyes closed, the air shimmering around her with golden threadlines—each one pulsing with Sanskrit mantras of kāla and ātmā. Her body was no longer merely mortal; it was a vessel. A bridge. A memory made flesh.
She whispered one word.
"Jñāna."
And the world responded.
A ring of glowing sigils burst out from beneath her feet—symbols older than the yugas themselves, etched into time. Her companions instinctively stepped back as the room flooded with raw awareness.
"I can see time," Eloryn murmured. "Not just its path… its choices."
Fenn looked over. "So… timevision?"
"Not quite," Pennrick muttered, watching in awe. "She's accessing Mahākāla's perception. Kaal Bhairav sees all outcomes simultaneously. She's brushing that power."
Suddenly, the shadows shifted.
They weren't cast by any light. They walked. One by one, they slithered across the walls, gathering into a single point—until a humanoid form emerged.
Skeletal. Cloaked in rotted memory. Its face was blank save for a thousand faint outlines of Eloryn's own eyes, mouths, screams.
The Gloam.
"Oracle."
Its voice was like silence being scraped apart.
"You came," Eloryn said, calm despite the tremor in her chest.
"You shouldn't exist. You are a knot in the weave. A divergence left unresolved."
"You are a fear," she replied. "Born of a past I rejected."
"I am what happens when you stop remembering why you fight. I am surrender. I am the end of questions."
Lys stepped between them. "And yet you seek her. You fear her."
"She is the last guardian of choice. And choice is chaos."
Maren drew his blade. "Well then. Get ready to be very uncomfortable."
The Gloam's body unfurled into dark tendrils of forgotten lifetimes, sweeping toward them.
But Eloryn raised her hand—and spoke a single mantra:
"कालक्रिया।"
(The Act of Time.)
Golden threads snapped from her fingertips and wrapped around the Gloam's attack mid-air. The tendrils halted—frozen in moment. Not dead. Not destroyed. Paused.
Everyone stared.
Fenn was the first to recover. "Okay. She just hit the pause button on evil time spaghetti. That's new."
Eloryn's eyes glowed brighter now—her voice distant.
"I didn't pause it. I delayed its inevitability."
The Gloam hissed, unraveling backward.
"This is not over. I will return when your faith falters. When time fails you."
And then it vanished—unwoven like smoke in reverse.
The room fell still.
Pennrick let out a slow breath. "She's not just remembering lives anymore. She's remembering divinity."
Eloryn turned, a flicker of exhaustion beneath her shining gaze.
"I think I've only just begun."
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