The black sludge remains pinned beneath the blue wards, but its surface clears like dark glass. Pale impressions drift within it, fragments of names, memories, and unfinished thoughts.
Kaelith
Those are not echoes from the gate. They are remnants of everyone the hunger has consumed.
A woman's name forms beneath the surface, then scatters into pale strokes. Beside it, a child's unfinished question fades before it can become sound.
Kaelith
The basin is a containment vessel, not a source. We mistook the prison for the fire, and fed it every safeguard we laid around it.
Understanding passes through the chamber like a cold draft. The crypt's feeding was not strengthening the lock. It was supplying the vessel with memory enough to keep the hunger contained.
Kaelith
All these years, I called it protection. I was only giving the dead one more place to disappear.
The copied runes on Harry's page brighten in answer. The dark glass turns toward him, displaying hundreds of half-formed thoughts, while Kaelith watches in grim silence and waits for Harry's response.