More than the searing heat, Ronan focused on the darkness pouring out and the pungent pumice ash rushing toward him. In that instant, it was as if decades of accumulated dust had been dumped out all at once, nearly enough to bury someone, yet it had no discernible weight.
Ronan did not dodge. An invisible barrier around him kept out the pumice ash, heat, and darkness. He also exerted some control to prevent a dust explosion. That would really leave him covered in ash.
He stepped inside, his footsteps faintly echoing.
The Womb Chamber was surprisingly spacious. The divine statue enshrined there had just crumbled into ash, producing the great clouds of dust. Yet its vague outline had not faded in the darkness. Instead, it had grown more sinister, with a strange sharpness to it. It brought to mind the Meditation Divine Kingdom system's idea of "using thought-sense as a carving knife."
Whether it had always been like this or had only just taken shape after what they had heard, Ronan could not tell.
He paid it no mind. A dim gray light shone from the Mirror Appraisal on his left shoulder, barely illuminating the Womb Chamber.
As he had sensed, the statue that should have been the chamber's most conspicuous feature had turned to ash. Dust swirled in midair, strangely revolving around some force at its center, as though struggling to come together.
Bat Master, seated off to one side, was half ash as well.
Yes, the entire right half of Bat Master's body, from the chest outward, had turned to ash. The fractured edges were black as charcoal, without a trace of blood.
Some of the drifting ash still connected to the left half of Bat Master's body and his barely intact head. Part of it retained a