Ronan did not return to the center of the battlefield.
He did not need to.
By the time the last of the resistance had been forced back and the remaining fighters either retreated or were cut down, the outcome had already been decided—not by victory, but by something far more inconvenient.
Shift.
Not in power.
In direction.
And that was always harder to contain.
The war outside still lingered in fragments—echoes of steel, distant commands, the low groan of structures that had taken too much damage—but inside the inner hall of Nightbane, everything was controlled again.
Still.
Measured.
Exactly as it should be.
Ronan stood near the far edge of the chamber, his gaze fixed on nothing in particular, his expression unreadable in a way that had always unsettled those who worked under h
