Lucy rose shakily.
The Crucible of Grace had restored his body, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt. The healing came with agony. Bones snapped back into place with brutal force, tendons reknit in bursts of burning light, and muscles stitched together like threads drawn by a divine, merciless sewing machine.
All around him, the fog pressed in.
It wasn't quiet. Hidden within the gloom, faint screams and distant shouts echoed—his teammates, lost in the mist. He couldn't see them, but he didn't need to.
He could feel them.
Every thread of emotion clung to him like cobwebs—panic, desperation, love, terror, and… something darker—a cold hatred, slick and crawling beneath his skin.
Caelgorr.
"They're all under illusions," Lucy muttered, his voice rough in his throat. Then a sharper thought struck him. He focused.
One… two… three… four…
There should have been five other emotional signatures—four teammates and the monster. But only four pulsed in his perception.
