Smoke curled from the fractured chapel dome.
The storm had passed—but the walls still groaned, and the kingdom still bled.
Isabel sat beside Rhaeser's unconscious form, his breath shallow, lips tinged pale. The healers moved in hushed dread, unable to do more than patch wounds that refused to stop reopening.
Every time he stirred, her own chest seized with pain.
Not magic.
Memory.
Residual echoes of the bond they'd once shared—now frayed thin as spider silk, held only by will.
She looked at the starfire pendant, cracked but still faintly pulsing.
She knew what it wanted.
What it required.
A final release.
One life for many.
One sacrifice to seal the fractures of stone and soul.
—
She stood, slowly.
Moved through the ruined halls barefoot, the chalk of ancient wards clutched
