Morwenna’s POV
Leofric's blood stained the snow.
Not much. Just a single drop, dark as ink, slipping from his palm where the shard had nicked him. But it was enough. The runes beneath the training ring flared like open mouths, swallowing the light.
"It reacted to you," I said, breath fogging in the cold air. "Again."
He clenched his fist, eyes on the circle of ash. "It's not the shard. It's me. I'm changing."
Sabine, standing at the edge of the ring, lowered her hood. Her eyes were shadowed. "You're not changing. You're being rewritten. The bond was never meant to tether a celestial."
The word struck the silence like thunder.
Celestial.
It wasn’t a title. It was a sentence.
I looked at Leofric. At his scars, his calloused hands, the lines around his mouth that hadn’t been there we
