The morning air within the high, arched corridors of the Astral Conclave was a living entity, distinct and sharp in a way Kael still struggled to process. In the Labyrinth, the air had been a predator—heavy, stagnant, and tasting of old copper, wet soot, and the metallic tang of dried blood. It had been something to be survived, a thin soup of oxygen that barely fueled the lungs. But here, as Kael walked toward the massive obsidian archway overlooking the departure plaza, the air was a revelation. It carried the biting, clean scent of the mountain peak and the faint, hauntingly sweet aroma of the blue-bells clinging to the jagged cliffsides thousands of feet below. It was a cold that didn't just chill; it clarified. Yet, despite the purity of it, Kael found his shoulders hunching, his musc
