The damp, stale wind drilled into his nose and mouth, stripping the warmth from his skin and mucous membranes. The cold seized his thoughts, making it hard to think.
Buildings, streets, rivers—everything that should have been there—vanished from sight. In their place, torrents of dark rainwater fell, merging heaven and earth in an apocalyptic deluge and returning everything to the chaos before creation.
Millions upon millions of tons of water fell from the sky, joining the flood surging up from underground as it raced across the squares and streets.
The depths, beyond reach, were connected to the surface by the currents. It was as if an ancient giant, drained of blood and in shock, had suddenly been flooded with it. A pulse traveled through its newly filled veins to the surface, and only then did the tiny creatures living among its withered fur realize in terror what they were facing: something had been active below them all along.
There was no thunder. Amid the rushing air, he sensed another kind of signal, one that came not from the clouds but from the waters below.
It rose with the bubbles, then broke apart like foam. The rushing wind tore it further, stretching it into something like a cry.
He had heard this sound before, in the tomb beneath the Tem River, when the Chaos Entity had pursued him. It was as if the voices of countless individuals were plucking the same string.
Now, that sound steamed up from the waves. The gale caught it along with the stale air, spreading it through every inch of space he could sense.
[Come!]
They called in low voices, yet the sound was deafening. It obeyed none of the rules he knew about sound; it did not belong to the realm of hearing.
For an