Dream Sinks

Those lines were moving.

Duncan heard Alice cry out. He snapped awake from his thoughts, abruptly looked up at the window, and beheld a sight he would never forget—

Over the sea where Lightwind Harbor had once stood, invisible threads as dense as hair and interwoven like mist were undergoing a drastic transformation. That spreading "gauze mist" slowly swelled, contracted, and writhed, shifting violently between illusion and reality as it gradually reshaped itself. Its portion above the sea contracted, condensed, and rose, while the structure floating among the clouds slowly expanded, split into crisscrossing branches, and hung down toward the edge of the sea like another vault of heaven.

An indescribable sense of oppression radiated from that ever-condensing phantom. The entire sea was gradually being shrouded beneath that invisible crown, and only then did Duncan finally see what it was—a tree.

Those "threads" floating above the sea were tangling together like strands of hair, forming the shape of a colossal tree—a "World Tree" vast enough to cover the entire sea!

Rune braced himself against the table and struggled to stand. This Elf old man, who had relied on sheer willpower to resist Xilantis's call, seemed to be nearing his limit. He too looked out the window—without Alice's power, he could not see those invisible threads, and to him the sea was still empty. Yet suddenly, vast shadows appeared over that empty expanse—the once invisible lines were gradually taking on outlines visible to the naked eye.

He saw that tree, that towering tree growing at a furious pace, spreading out from the elves' Racial Dreamscape.

"That is..." Rune's eyes widened at once. Memories and emotions that seemed to have slept in the depths of his soul surged forth like a tide, making him murmur instinctively, "Xilantis... Xilantis has come to take