( Kael’s POV )
The mountain didn’t sleep. It breathed.
Kael could hear it beneath the stone , a low, rhythmic pulse that trembled through the outpost’s walls. The others couldn’t hear it yet. But he could. Every beat hummed in the black veins that threaded under his skin, the same tempo that had risen from the gate the night before.
He sat alone near the chamber wall, the one marked with the wolf’s eye sigil. The cracks he’d made earlier were deeper now, faint gold light leaking through them like blood through gauze. The air smelled of ozone and salt, the Deep’s breath.
Kael flexed his hand, watching faint sparks flicker between his fingers. The energy inside him wasn’t fading. It was learning.
“You’re not sleeping again,” came Aria’s voice.
He looked up. She was leaning against the
