The air still vibrated with the echoes of the explosion when Frieren finished the sentence.
"That… wasn't a natural failure," she said, her eyes fixed on the void where the core should have been nothing but rubble. "Someone pulled the anchor from a distance."
Strax didn't respond immediately.
His draconic body remained motionless, like a living statue, every muscle tense beneath the cracked scales. His senses were heightened, not only hearing the physical world but sensing the invisible currents of mana, miasma, and intention that still snaked through the destroyed hall.
Then it happened.
A sound emerged from the center of the crater.
It wasn't an ordinary roar.
It didn't come from the air.
It came from within the earth.
A scream.
Distorted. Elongated. Too deep to belong to a single being. It sounded like dozens of overlapping voices, tearing each other apart, mixing pain, hatred, and something primal hunger.
The stone beneath them trembled.
