The chamber fell silent.

The last echo of Magic energy of the severed connection still trembled in the roots, walls, and air itself.

No one moved or spoke.

They simply stood there with the gravity of the storm god's final words crushing down on them.

Aesa lowered her arms slowly, the frost around her fingers dimming into pale mist.

"Devours dying gods… puppets them… envelopes worlds…".

The words circled her mind like a curse she had once heard spoken long ago in a battlefield full of ice and corpses.

Her breath came out uneven now, leaving a thin trail of frost in the air. The memory she tried so hard to bury clawed its way back to the surface, and her jaw tightened until it trembled.

Adrius stared at the floor, but his eyes weren't looking at anything in front of him.

His thoughts spiraled. He had fought monsters before but this was something entirely outside scripture or logic that he had no understanding.

His fingers twitched as if searching for a quill, desperate to write down every detail before fear erased it. His skin felt cold and he couldn't tell whether the sensation came from the storm god's warning or from the fear sinking into his bones.

Lysander also found himself silently gripping his own wrist. His pulse raced under his fingers.

"Devouring gods? What kind of crazy thing is that???" He wanted to deny it. But the look of absolute terror that flickered in the ancient Forest God's eyes earlier told him everything.

His mouth felt dry and his stomach hollowed. It was the first time in years he genuinely felt small. Even when fighting the Great Calamity he didn't feel this small and depressed.

Thar'Zul-Vekar leaned heavily against the roots that held them upright, their breath faint and unsteady. Gods did not fear easily. However, they knew what this entity was truly capable of doing.

The way their shoulders shook spoke louder expressing their thoughts.

They knew what the Gravebringer's power meant. They knew what this Zerathul was becoming and the exhaustion eating through them was not just physical, it was fear of what lay ahead.

Eccar rubbed his arms without thinking. Goosebumps ran across his skin. He felt the chill dig all the way into his spine.

He had faced death, abominations, and divine wrath of otherworldly beings as a Dragonborn, but this felt different.

This felt like something that wasn't supposed to exist. Something wrong and final. And this entity had absorbed Krono, which he never thought was possible.

"If he can devour gods and Dragonborn, then what are we supposed to do?" The thought refused to leave him and left a bitter pit in his chest.

And Erend…

Erend stood closest to the cocoon and he felt the cold fear more intensely than any of them.

It crawled beneath his skin and tightened around his heart like unseen chains.

He thought he was prepared and ready to hear anything.

He thought he had braced himself with the knowledge and resolve from his meeting with Veyrun.

But the words of the storm god sounds worse than he had prepared for.

He swallowed, but the dread in his throat remained. He clenched and unclenched his fist.

He felt cold.

A cold made from fear.

Everyone in the chamber sensed the same silent truth. They now knew that Zerathul was something catastrophic, a force capable of unmaking worlds, resurrecting gods, absorbing Dragonborn, and bending creation into his will.

Aesa didn't move at first. Her fingers curled slowly, the frost fading from her knuckles as she forced her breathing into something steadier.

Then, finally, she pushed herself away from the pillar.

Her boots scraped the stone floor as she took a step forward.

Everyone noticed.

Aesa didn't usually speak when fear pressed the room flat. They haven't known her for long so they didn't understand her that much.

But they knew that she wasn't the type to fill silence with anything unnecessary. She even prefers to stay silent most of the time.

But right now it looked like she carried something heavy.

And in this situation, it must be something connected to this Zerathul problem.

"Aesa?" Erend said quietly. "What is it?"

Her eyes flicked toward him for a brief second. Then she inhaled.

"I once had a husband," she said.

Eccar's eyes widened.

Aesa never talked about her past.

She continued.

"A very long time ago, before I came to my seclusion in that world, I lived in a kingdom."

Her gaze drifted away from them, not to avoid their stares, but because the memory itself was pulling her inward.

"It was prosperous and peaceful. The kind of place where the people believed they would grow old without ever having to lift a blade. So I thought I would never use my power."

She hesitated. Her next breath shook.

"And my husband was a captain in the royal guard."

Silence tightened around the group.

She pressed a hand to her chest for a moment, as if something old and brittle ached there.

"He was strong and dependable. The kind of man who could calm an entire squad with only a single order."

A faint, bitter smile ghosted across her lips.

"But they couldn't stop what came."

She exhaled shakily, then the cold around her returned.

"There was a disaster. An undead disaster."

Aesa's voice dropped.

"One day people in the kingdom began turning into something terrifying. Their bodies twisted, their minds rotted. Citizens, soldiers, nobles… everyone became undead. From inside the heart of the city."

Lysander whispered, "A necromantic outbreak at a terrifying scale."

Aesa nodded once, her eyes darkening.

"And it wasn't natural. It wasn't just a plague."

She looked at them now, truly looked. The fear in her gaze mirroring the dread still coiling around their bones.

"It was caused by someone."

Her jaw tensed. Her next words barely escaped her throat.

"A being who wielded a terrifying power of necromancy."

Her voice dropped to a whisper.

"A being who called himself the Gravebringer. The one we faced right now."

The chamber temperature plummeted.

Aesa finished, her voice raw.

"So when he spoke that name… I knew." She swallowed hard. "It wasn't the first time he appeared and it wouldn't be his last. The worst part is… my husband… he was not killed. He had become that entity's soldiers."

—