Forest:
The sky was just beginning to lighten, that bleak, colorless hour between night and morning, when everything felt suspended in grief.
I hadn’t slept. None of us had.
The rogue attack hit harder than the others. They came in coordinated waves, forcing us to split our defenses, scattering us across three flanks. We held the walls, but barely. My knuckles were still bloodied from where I’d torn through one of them with nothing but my bare hands. Not even shifted. Just rage and instinct.
We lost Jarek.
He bled out in Mira’s arms.
I saw Brooks’ face when it happened—how he didn’t say a word. Just clenched his jaw and stared off like he could bottle the grief and use it later.
I knew that feeling.
I carried it with me too.
My boots dragged through half-melted snow as I walked th
