Five days.
I stared at the seal-map spread across the War Chamber’s obsidian table, each of the nine seals pulsing with weakening light like dying heartbeats. The shadow-creep was visible now even to human eyes—dark tendrils seeping through hairline fractures in what should have been unbreakable divine barriers.
“The rate of degradation is accelerating,” I said quietly, more to myself than to the council assembled around me. “Not linear. Exponential.”
Valerius stood at the far end of the table, his massive frame silhouetted against the war map’s projection. Lycan King. My mate. My strategic counterpart. His amber eyes tracked the same data I was reading, and I felt our Mate Bond hum with shared urgency—but when he spoke, his voice was entirely his own, grounded in his authority.
“The p
