The black drained out of the walls first.
It went slowly, starting at the top of the tower and working its way down, until the stone around them was no longer black at all but a pale, smooth grey. Nathan had seen that grey every day of his life. It was the grey of the Towers back home, the ones that had stood over the capital since before he was born.
Then the stair began to mend.
The broken steps above them grew back out of the wall one after another, smooth and whole, and the gaps below them filled in the same way, until the long spiral ran unbroken again from the top of the tower to the floor. The cracks the Lord had left in the far wall closed over. Even the deep star-shaped break where her body had struck the stone sealed itself and was gone.
'Summoner,' Kuro said through the link, very quietly, 'it's healing.'
'It's not healing,' Ororo said. She was sitting up against Mirko's shoulder now, pale, with the blood wiped from her lip. 'It's changing into something else.'
