When Amun came to, indeed one sight had been robbed from him, but he had a inkling, just a pinch that another sight, one driven by the pineal acorn in the mind had been flung wide open. Not only that, but oddly he had felt her presence, obviously enough, from the attack, but because of this insight from his new sense, he pondered just how far had that olde scroll had flung her. She was crack-smart though, he didn’t have much time before she would recover. Amun realized that his guardian, the gentle meister Ben was singing a hymn over him as he went about his healing ministrations. Not just any lame choir jingle, no!, Amun realized it was a song he had not heard since he left the family hearth, so many years and cycles before! Ben sounded as Ivad’s rumble had (mayhaps not quite the same range),

Deep within the stone and air,

Breath was born, a whispered prayer.

In the hollow of the starless night,

A song was sung, a spark of light.

From the dust, the voice did rise,

Twisting through the endless skies,

A word, a breath, the first refrain,

That shaped the earth, the sea, the flame.

Oh, hear the hum beneath the stone,

The pulse that beats in wood and bone,

A rhythm born before the time,

That echoes in the world’s design.

A song of breath that made the sky,

The word that bids the stars to fly,

A song of bones and ash and flame,

That builds, destroys, and builds again.

The mountains tremble at the sound,

The oceans rise, the winds resound.

In every stone, in every tree,

The song persists, eternally.

Oh, hum, ye winds, and moan, ye waves,

For in your voice, creation braves.

And in our breath, the song is sung,

That turns the stars and calls the sun.

The song will rise and fall with time,

And in its notes, the world will climb.

The sound of stone, the breath of air,

The song of foundation, everywhere.

We are born from dust and flame,

Our breath a part of this refrain.

In every pulse, the song is known,

The voice of stone, the breath of bone.

Oh, sing ye stars and hum, ye sea,

For breath and song have made us free.

The Jaro’s voice, the ancient call,

Will sing the rise and mark the fall.

Amun laid still, the moment and song an omen and a gift. He need not ruin Ben’s intention with snark now, no. Good friend as he is, was at his side when that raven valkyrie bum rushed them both! Dim was light of the Spire barely brushing against his skin, dim was his recovering mind. His mortal coil outwardly motionless but alive with inner turmoil, he had to work this out and there was so much groggy smoke to sense through, he worked against the panic.

Afar and perplexed as usually, The Choir whispered from observation, unsure of what to do with the wily warlock in this state—physically blind, yet somehow a larger potential threat than ever! Had he disintegrated their sanguine assassin? What power, lo! What if the Odium had chosen him somehow and they were acting ignorantly of their own hubris?

Amun, obviously could hear their prattle, his hearing rung fine as tight drums should as always (given the abuses that they suffered again and again, the pressure changes in altered states were numbing!). He cared not for the soft voiced gaggle, now that his vision had been ripped from the world of form. Amun no longer listened with his ears; he no longer needed them. There was a true sense above them all that he was slowly, clumsily decalcifying.

Ben stood near, always the sentinel, watching as Amun’s lips trembled, forming half-syllables, mostly hums, pieces of a song not yet born. The meister smiled, thinking the old mage was trying to sing along the family song! Amun, slapped clumsily at his portly face, quieting him out of frustration, the words wouldn’t come as they should, especially with Ben waggling on! They fumbled, spiraling out, twisting like the fragile tendrils of a vine grasping for the sun. Amun’s breath shook with each exhalation, his chest rising and falling like the tides of a far-off shore. He was so tired, but he had to try the summons.

“Breathe,” he murmured, his voice rippling out as though it were a part of the very air itself. “Breathe in... union.”

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The Choir stilled, it was old verse, heresy for one as sulfuric as he to utter. Ben, ever steady, leaned closer, straining to catch Amun’s words, (though it was not Ben or into that space that he was attempting to commune to). The words were meant for something else—meant for an architect. The message was forming, but in pieces. Whispers of a song, a spell, breaths caught in the rhythm of existence itself.

“Born of one breath,” Amun whispered, his voice faltering as though it were climbing. “One word... one... story.”

Ben furrowed his brow. Had he heard this before. A prayer? A liturgy? He was tempted to go search out the source, to help….to help Amun? The Choir? If he indeed found the materia Amun was quoting, who would his fidelity fall to? …

It didn’t matter. Amun’s lips were moving as if they were carving the air, as if every sound was trying to birth something new. Each word, like a wave crashing against the inside of his mind, ebbed out, but the current was hard to follow.

“Burn it,” Amun gasped, his head tilting back as his blind eyes flickered behind closed lids. “Burn it,

…Abe…

... destroy the source... code... before it gets out. It will spread. The truth... will ruin.”

His breath hitched again, desperate, but not smooth—clunky and poetic all at once. The words danced on the edge of coherence, circling, just out of reach.

“We are bound... bound to this... flesh,” he murmured, “but I see... I see beyond. We are... infinite. You... and I... one breath.”

Ben placed the cooling salve across the tattooed brow of the other, pondering who Amun was addressing in his addled state, must be a fever! He coaxed, his voice gentle but firm, trying to guide Amun back, “Amun, focus. It is Ben. We’re alone, relatively alone.” Ben shot a look up into the balcony of cowardly peepers.

But focus was elusive. Amun’s mind wasn’t in this room. It was spiraling, caught in the twisting fractal of the Elden scroll’s revelation, climbing and falling, looping endlessly. Amun tried for center, but it would slide into another verse as he pondered the previous! Calming, his very breath became bellows of tidal rhythm, the song, the pattern that was meant to guide Abe across the planes. Could he reach that far? Would a creator such as he ken?

“We spiral... out,” he choked, “reach for the flame... expand, contract, burn.”

He wasn’t sure if it was making sense anymore, if Abe could even hear him through the fabric of the worlds. He felt so weak! The song, the vibration, it climbed—it was pulling him upward, but his control over it wavered, as if the notes were spiraling faster than his mind could follow.

Amun’s hands trembled in the air. He could sense the energy, feel the pneuma moving through his body, his soul. The breath of the universe itself was twisting inside him, moving his lips, his lungs, his very spirit. Word and breath, tangled in the same rhythm.

“Breathe in,” he whispered, panting between the words, “and let go, Abe.”

The synapse over space, time and realities snapped like a whip, it singed white hot to both their minds!, Abe’s presence—not in the flesh, not in the space physically shared, but in the deep tunneling well of existence that vibrated between them. The song was connecting them, the rhythm of their shared essence. But Amun couldn’t hold it steady. The lyric was too vast, too chaotic. His voice broke under the weight of it, splitting like a fragile reed in the wind.

“Burn the knowledge, Abe,” he urged, his voice becoming raw, pleading, but the words still drifted in and out like a distant pulse. “Burn... before it spreads. We’re not meant... not meant to hold it.”

Each word was part of a spiral, climbing, falling, slipping out of his control. The knowledge pressed against him, breaking his mind in pieces, his voice tumbling like a river broken by rocks, rushing and stopping, fighting for release.

And still, Ben watched, quiet and steady, like an anchor in the storm. But Ben couldn’t understand. He couldn’t feel the weight of the code, the burden that Amun carried now. It was too much to explain, too much to convey through words alone. He needed Abe to feel it, to breathe it in.

The rhythm faltered, and Amun’s voice became softer, less jagged, more resigned.

“Burn it... Abe. It’s the only way... to rise. From the ashes... breathe again... build again.”

But there was something else—a presence. A cold ripple in the air. Amun’s breath hitched, and for a moment, his hands stilled. His third eye, his only vision now, turned inward to the astral, where he could sense her. Adrestia. A shade for now, no longer whole and quite unconscious, for a moment he pondered a coup de grâce by calling in a favor.

Amun strained to focus on the faint vibrations of Adrestia’s presence, something odd there… His improved vision, if he could call it that now, was drawn to the subtle movement, a dim ripple in the astral plane where her unconscious form hovered, inert but somehow still dangerous. As he tried to steady himself, preparing for what came next (even in his flaccid state), narrowing his thoughts to pin her down…with what? Idle threats?… yet, something within her stirred. It wasn’t the slow, waking movement of a body rising from sleep. No, this was something else entirely—sudden, instinctual, and without warning.

A shiver rippled through the air. Amun’s breath hitched. Without a sound, Adrestia’s other surged forth from her body, like a trapdoor spider springing from its burrow. It wasn’t the elegant, deliberate emergence of a conscious force; it was fast and almost violent, as though every fiber of her being sought defense even while she remained unaware. From her pores, threads spun outward—delicate, shimmering like soot after a fire—stretching, coiling, and weaving through the room. In mere seconds, a thick, viscous web spread across the Spire, its strands draped like the remnants of an inferno, leaving a silt-like residue in every corner.

The Choir gasped, their whispering immediately stilling, watching in wide-eyed awe. They shifted nervously in the shadows, mistaking the sudden eruption of the webbing as part of Amun’s craft. Perhaps it was his blindness, his fumbling with the scroll’s knowledge, they thought. The silt-like strands shimmered in the dim light, giving the illusion of control—an arcane magic, too complex for them to grasp. "The blind warlock weaves the threads of reality," one whispered. Another murmured, "Perhaps this is his new vision made manifest!” though Amun was the sole perceiver of the web’s origin.

But Ben’s intuition knew better. He stepped closer to Amun, eyes narrowed, watching the unnatural way the webbing pulsed, as if it were a living thing—searching, hunting. This wasn’t Amun’s doing. Ben had seen his craft before, knew its shape, its feeling. The pungent odor of his could pacts and vulgar preparations…. This... this was foreign. His hand instinctively hovered near the hilt of his blasting rod, though he knew deep down that vorpal was needed right now!

Suddenly, the web strands lashed out like a double-stranded starfish, as though they had found something to grasp, and before Ben could call out, they pierced through the thin veil of the astral plane. With a single, terrifying motion, the parasite lashed itself to the room’s heat sources—the torches, the braziers, the gas lamps. The entire chamber seemed to inhale at once, and in the next instant, a deafening WHOMFF echoed through the Spire as the flames were smothered in unison. Darkness swallowed the room whole.

Amun’s third eye flared, his breath faltering. He could feel the ripple of Hastur’s power as her other anchored itself in the material world, binding itself to the warmth of the flames, turning the heat into sound mooring. In her addled mind, she was reaching, even in her unconscious state, trying to tether herself back to the physical plane. She didn’t know what she was doing, but the parasitic force surging from her had one goal: to return.

The Choir, startled by the extinguishing of the light, murmured in awe and fear. They still believed it was part of Amun’s strange new powers, his way of unraveling and rebuilding reality in the dark. But Ben could feel it—this was not Amun’s doing. Something else was taking hold, something predatory. He stepped closer to Amun, his voice low but urgent. “Amun, this isn’t your work. She’s here. She’s coming!”

Amun exhaled, his breath shaky but determined. He had bought himself time, but not much. Adrestia’s other was crawling back into reality, threading itself through the warmth of the room, and he knew it wouldn’t be long before she fully returned. He had to act now, had to reach Abe before the flames ignited again and Adrestia reclaimed her strength. The clock was ticking, and with every breath, the web tightened.

She floated at the edge of his awareness, lingering like a ghost unsure of its place. She was maimed, cut loose from her body by the force of the scroll, but not gone. Not yet.

“She’s a shade,” Amun thought, his lips trembling, barely able to form the words. “Pushed... astral... but she doesn’t know.” She was lovely to ponder a demise for, but he had to move this present task forward and not attend to her.

It was buying him time—valuable, precious time. But for how long?

“Time,” he whispered, “all we have... time... expanding, contracting. She’s lost... but I’m not.”

His breath steadied. He could feel the pattern aligning now, the rhythm of the throat song falling into place as he reached out, once again, for Abe.

“We are spirit... bound to this flesh,” Amun chanted softly, his voice melodic now, drifting on the currents of the air. “Burn... the old world... burn the book, Abe. Destroy it... and breathe again.”

He knew the words were drifting between realms, part prayer, part song, part plea. The Thuum carried them through the veins of the universe, a song of creation, a song of destruction. Amun couldn’t control the message’s form any longer—it was its own entity now, a rhythm spiraling outward, seeking Abe across the folds of reality.

And still, Adrestia hovered. A shade in the corner of his mind moving closer and closer.