The room was deathly silent.
The cloying fragrance Echo had left behind haunted my nostrils like a ghost, refusing to fade. The cold of the floor seeped through my thin clothes into my bones, joining forces with the increasingly hollow chill inside me, almost freezing me solid.
My gravely injured body was like a broken doll; even moving a finger brought tearing agony. But worse than the physical pain was the void steadily expanding deep within my soul. Every sacrifice, every time a being like Echo drained me, chipped another piece from the foundations of my existence. How much of "me" remained? Was I still the mad idealist who had first written down a name, intent on cleansing the world? Or was I merely an empty shell driven by the notebook's power, gradually losing my humanity?
Echo's final words lingered like a curse.
The Spring of Birth. A beginning to oppose the end.
It sounded like a myth, like the delirious ramblings of despair. But after the Cemetery of the Nameless, the Rift Corridor, and the collapse of the spatial barriers, anything impossible seemed possible. The question was, where could I find it? How? Could I reach it before I vanished completely?
Then there was the notebook. It lay beside my hand, unusually quiet, as docile as a sated cat. But I knew a deeper danger lurked beneath that calm. Cracks in the shackles spread through my mental space like crazing across porcelain. Every use of its power hastened their collapse. Once the shackles shattered completely, what awaited me was total "assimilation"-becoming part of the notebook and losing the last remnants of my "self."
Or worse... being harvested by Lonesome Deep Chill, who had awakened beneath Greenland's glaciers and left a mark deep within my soul. The Ancient God's whispers