Chapter 89 - Into the Drowned Past

The sky cracked open above them—not with thunder, nor lightning, but with revelation. A golden radiance poured forth from the fissures in the heavens, liquid and slow, as if the stars themselves had begun to weep molten fire. The fractured dome of the chamber—once marred by centuries of war, judgment, and divine rage—became a canvas streaked with light that remembered. It wasn't sunlight, nor stormlight, but something far older, as if the first dawn of the world had reached through the veil of time to lay its hand upon this forgotten place. The light spilled down through the ruin like veins of molten memory, tracing the lines of every broken stone and shattered arch, gilding the ash with a somber, sacred majesty. And within that glow, everything stilled. Time bowed to silence.