The air in the royal quarters had become a physical weight, thick with the cloying, artificial scent of the High Council’s incense—a smell meant to signify "purity" but which now felt like the stench of a burial shroud. I stood before the tall silver mirror, my fingers trembling as I gripped the edge of the vanity. The woman looking back at me was a stranger, a creature caught between two worlds. Beneath the pale surface of my skin, a faint, rhythmic purple light pulsed like a second heartbeat. It wasn't the soft, ethereal glow of the moonlight I had once known; it was a bruised, hungry violet that seemed to swallow the candlelight around it.
"It’s getting worse," I whispered, my voice breaking as the static beneath my skin intensified until it was a constant, low-frequency hum vibrating
