Consciousness returns like ice water.
Sharp.
Violent.
Unforgiving.
I come back to myself strapped inside a lattice of living sigils, my wrists bound in cold luminous thread, my spine pressed against an altar of carved bone and silver. The air tastes wrong—too clean, scrubbed of wilderness, thick with sanctified rot.
A cathedral.
Not of gods.
Of desperation pretending to be holy.
My first thought is not fear.
It is where is my child.
The heir answers instantly—coiled tight inside me, shielded behind instinctive defensive compression so dense it feels like iron wrapped in light. Their panic thrums through me in short violent pulses.
Alive.
Alert.
Angry.
Good.
The room is filled with people.
Dozens of them.
Mothers. Fathers. Elders. Children wrapped in blankets. The dying. Th
