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He followed the Lord Saqqaf's lead and gently placed his bare hand against glass.

"Now concentrate," said Abbas. "Close your eyes, if it helps. Take hold of your soul and slowly press it into the Forge. Use your soul to try and sense the object's shape, its volume. Then look more closely, if you can. Don't rush it. This may take--"

Hector was long gone.

He'd lost track of Abbas' voice almost immediately--and he wasn't too bothered by it, either. Perhaps he should have been.

But this was so strange.

And yet so familiar.

The darkness all around him was like a warm ocean. Soothing. Reassuring. It was welcoming him. Like an old friend.

He didn't have many of those. In fact, he might've had literally none. His memories felt a little foggy. Distant. Requiring real concentration to summon them.

Hmm. That didn't seem good.

He felt a little too... loose, somehow. His mind was stretching, going everywhere. But there was nothing to hold onto in here. Just the darkness. An endless expanse.

He refocused. No wandering. That seemed dangerous.

His thought processes were all feeling a bit sluggish, weighed down in this darkness. But if he concentrated all of them on the same thing, he felt fairly normal again.

Yeah. That was better. Clearer.

Where was he? Inside the Forge? Something like that, probably.

This felt an awful lot like when he'd first encountered Rasalased. That probably wasn't a coincidence.

And just like that encounter, there was probably something here that he wasn't yet picking up on. When Rasalased had been totally dormant, that space within the Shards had felt entirely empty.

So what was he missing here? Hmm. Obviously, Abbas had wanted to show him something. The "true character" of the Forge or whatever.

He could try meditating more deeply. That was what had allowed him to reach Rasalased. Seemed like it might work.

But he wanted to try something else here.