A chill crawled across the back of Clyde's neck.
His instincts screamed.
Without hesitation he activated his [Flight] skill. Lightning still surging around his feet as he launched upward, cloaked in a trail of shadow and sparks. In a heartbeat he rose high above the basin, the crystal terrain shrinking beneath him.
He turned in mid-air and looked down. And then he saw it.
The cracked ground below the violet core was splitting open.
A jagged fissure spread outward in a web of fractures and from within the deepest rift, something moved slowly and subtly but massive.
Then an eye opened.
It blinked once, vertical and slit-pupiled, like a serpent's but the size of it dwarfed the Myrraline formation.
Its shimmered with shifting colors and a dull oily glow leaked from around its edges. Another kind of magic power bled from the crack like smoke.
Clyde narrowed his eyes.
He didn't know what it was. It had no shape he recognized, no form, or presence he could pin down.
