Malikye’s POV
We didn’t speak for a long time after the Blood Knight vanished.
Not because there was nothing to say.
But because none of us liked what had just happened enough to put it into words.
The forest stretched endlessly around us, dense and shadowed, the kind of place where light didn’t belong for long. Moonlight filtered through the branches in thin, fractured beams, casting long, shifting shadows across the ground. Every step felt heavier now, not just from exhaustion, but from the weight of knowing something far worse than the Hollow had found me.
And worse—
It had chosen not to kill me.
I walked a few paces behind Kael and Selene, my eyes drifting between the trees, my senses sharper than they had ever been before. Every sound stood out now—the crunch of leaves beneath
