Chapter 98 The Shadows Stir

• Beneath a sky bruised with stormlight, the black citadel of Vhal-Arkan trembled.
• Its towers were carved from obsidian and bone, veined with molten light that pulsed like veins beneath a living skin. For centuries it had slept, half-buried in the wastes of the Shadow March, but now the earth itself seemed to wake beneath it.
• Inside its hollow halls, drums beat in rhythms older than speech. The sound rolled through the corridors, deep and resonant, shaking loose the dust of centuries.