Dante
The nights are getting shorter, or maybe I just can’t sleep anymore. Every time I close my eyes, I hear the snap of bone, the growl of rogues, the faint whisper of Shirley’s breath when she’s curled up beside me. And underneath all of that… the sound of a storm I can’t stop.
I can feel it tightening around us, and it’s not just Elias’s games anymore. Something deeper is shifting in the shadows.
I stand at the edge of the compound before dawn, watching as a few of my men finish their patrols. The air still tastes of iron from the last fight—wolves heal, but ground remembers blood. I light a cigarette I don’t really want, letting the smoke cut through the damp chill.
My thoughts won’t quiet.
Elias is moving too cleanly, too deliberately, for this to just be about testing boundarie
