Chapter 266: Broken

Li stepped back as he felt the cloying darkness of the broken dwarven civilization return around him. He blinked his eyes. The change was intensely jarring. This throne room, this broken space filled with broken things and a broken man, was once something that hummed and whirred with life and magic and light. 

He felt Tia squeeze his hand as she too returned to the world from within Tyr's heart, finding the shift just as jarring. Feeling her hand returned Li fully to his senses – he had to be strong, unaffected like an oak in the wind for her, after all.

He stepped in front of Tia while keeping hold of her hand, letting her have some comfort as she adjusted. The shift was jarring not only purely from a visual aspect, but also emotionally and spiritually. Diving into hearts as deeply as Tia did was something far more intimate than any kind of artificial dive Li had experienced in virtual reality or even when he saw into his head priest Ivo's past.