Old Man Tera and Oura stood over Old Man Shah's corpse.
They had been just standing there for a long while. Every part of the sequence was something they had seen. They had watched Shah go from confident, to determined, to serious, to horrified, and then to death.
It was a matter that took several, long grueling hours, but the ending was still the same. They couldn't even start an attempt to help.
The moment Shah started, they had all known that it was too late to go back. The only way forward was either he succeeded or he died.
But there was such a rolling quagmire around Sylas that it felt like he was falling into quicksand and being spun in a whirlpool all at once. Maybe even that wasn't apt enough of a description.
He had been stuck on the horizon of a black hole, unable to extricate himself until he was sucked dry of everything he was.
All that was left of him now was a husk and his robes.
