Around him, the air seemed to shift.
Growing denser, heavier. As if even the cave itself had held its breath.
Élisa, just a few steps away, slowly turned her head toward him.
She frowned — not out of worry, but with a kind of startled, instinctive vigilance.
She knew that kind of energy.
Not because she'd ever seen it in him — no, this was a first.
But she'd felt it before.
In some of the Awakened from her tribe… and in her own mother.
Even though her mother had never managed to awaken her first Stigmata, she and three other elders had come closer than anyone else.
But in Dylan?
It was too soon. Too fast.
And yet… there he was. Sitting, unmoving, while the essence within him stabilized.
An invisible current had begun to flow through the cave, and the nearby crystal lights flickered faintly, as if the ambient mana was adjusting to this new presence.
Élisa stepped forward, almost against her will.
