EVELARAThe moment my eyes fell on the portrait, the room dissolved beneath me... Light bent, sound disappeared, and the warmth of the palace faded into a hollow, stretching darkness.My breath caught, and my chest felt as if it had been carved open and left exposed to the cold emptiness around me.I stumbled forward but landed on nothing; the floor seemed to have vanished, leaving me suspended in the dark, yet every sense burned with awareness.A pulse thrummed in the void— powerful, rhythmic, almost like a heartbeat not my own.My hands moved instinctively, grasping at air that resisted my touch, and yet I felt it— the aura of the man in the portrait.Those eyes, storm-grey ones— It was alive, almost sentient, and it drew me in, twisting something deep inside me… My own heartbeat joined the rhythm.I felt it then— another heartbeat. Familiar, yet very distant, but alive… Dravara!Sh-she's there, awakening, restless and alert, whispering…Then— I heard it. A laugh, sharp and cruel, ro
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