He had recited it for six hours. She had stopped crying after the first ten minutes. By the end, she was just a statue of dust and silence.
He fell.
He’d cornered a lone Etrean Inquisitor—a woman who had been hunting him for a month, immune to the Bangle’s influence because of a forgotten, painstakingly inscribed sigil on her silver cuirass. She was out of tricks, her sword broken, her back against the chasm. He could have just killed her. It would have been clean. sovereign bangle deepwoken
The Sovereign Bangle was warm when he slid it onto his wrist. Not the comforting heat of a campfire, but the feverish pulse of something alive and hungry. The Thresher froze mid-lunge, its serpentine head cocking as if listening to a voice only it could hear. Then, with a shiver that rippled down its barbed spine, it turned and swam away, disappearing into the abyss. He had recited it for six hours
Kaelen felt the Bangle’s suggestion before he even formed the thought. Make her dance , it whispered. Make her dance until her feet bleed. It would be funny. He fell
The chasm swallowed him. The last thing he heard was the Bangle’s shriek, a discordant chord that shattered into a million pieces of dissonant static as the black water closed over his head. The pressure was immense, the cold absolute. But for one fleeting, glorious second, he felt his mind become his own again.