Jenne arrived a few minutes later, her boots dragging like she’d aged in the span of a few hours. Her braid had come loose again, and the circles under her eyes were darker than I remembered seeing.
She’d been working all day with the Arcane unit, trying to rebuild what the Hollow had stripped from us—runes, protections, memory wards. Anything to help us feel safe again. When she stepped into the war hall and saw the map in my hands, she stopped. Her eyes scanned the lines, the sigils, the marked paths—and widened. Not in confusion. In recognition. She knew exactly what it was.
And then her expression fell apart. Like something inside her broke open, too deep to catch.
“No,” she whispered, almost like she was begging the word to change what she already understood. “No, Kyla. That can’
