Page 188 of The Last Remaining Light

They wound through the abyss like luminous arteries carrying light through the body of the world itself. Some crossed one another in vast intersections while others disappeared into tunnels large enough to swallow cities. Their glow illuminated portions of the cavern, revealing impossible depths and structures hidden within the darkness.

Elowynn forgot how to breathe.

For her entire life, aethercurrents had existed only in diagrams, maps, and theories. Lines sketched across parchment by scholars trying to describe something no one had ever truly seen.

Yet here they were.

Real. Living. Beautiful.

She could feel the resonance coursing through them.

A soft silver light bloomed beneath the veins in her hands.

Lora caught the movement first. "Elowynn..."

The whisper drew every eye.

Elowynn stared at her own hands as the faint glow spread beneath her skin like starlight beneath water. It wasn't painful. If anything, it felt comforting. Something inside her had recognized the currents long before her mind had. She slowly turned her hands over.

"This has only ever happened when I channel resonance,” she whispered. “It should have faded by now.”

Alyra stepped closer, her curiosity momentarily overcoming her caution. "It is strange to see without your channeling, I admit. It’s like your resonance…”

"It's responding," Vaelor finished quietly.

Even Korvel seemed at a loss for words as he looked from the currents to Elowynn and back again.

Around them, the few remaining survivors had fallen quiet, unable to tear their eyes away from the luminous rivers threading through the earth. Others whispered prayers beneath their breath, while one simply dropped to their knees in stunned disbelief.

Only Caelyn wasn't looking at the currents.

His head was tilted slightly, his black eyes fixed somewhere beyond the flowing light.

Slowly, Elowynn lifted her gaze from the silver light beneath her skin to the rivers flowing through the earth.

Only then did she truly comprehend what she was looking at.

The sight shattered every sense of scale she had ever possessed.

"They're enormous," Lora whispered.

Beside her, Vaelor stared into the crystal abyss with the same stunned expression as everyone else. "Every map was wrong."

No one argued because evidence lay before them. The currents were not small streams running beneath the continent.

They were the continent.

Everything above them suddenly felt insignificant in comparison.

Cities, observatories, roads, and histories all rested upon something vastly older and immeasurably larger than themselves.

It left Elowynn feeling impossibly small.

And very afraid.

Another pulse rolled through the nearest current, and they all watched as the silver-blue light brightened then spread. The reaction traveled through the network faster than thought. Current after current illuminated across the ravine, carrying that single pulse outward through the darkness until the entire cavern seemed to awaken around them.

Caelyn staggered, and Elowynn reached for him immediately. His hand found hers before she could speak.