They sealed the infirmary within the hour.
Guards stationed at every entrance. Windows boarded. Wards placed by trembling witches and reinforced by silver-glyph stones from the old temples—ones they hadn’t touched in decades, for fear of waking what they no longer understood.
But fear had already arrived.
Quinn watched the stone wall where the message still pulsed faintly, the words etched into it with unnatural precision, as if the wind had wielded claws. The door is open. He is not the only one.
Jace hadn’t left Rowan’s side since.
Neither had Quinn.
No one spoke of what it meant—not yet. Not out loud. But the way Elder Kairis clutched her staff tighter, the way the council stopped issuing commands and started praying, the way even the wolves who had never feared the dark now kept
