Third POV
The dead zone changed the moment the Nightmare Commander vanished.
The air, once heavy with ashes and heat from battle, thinned into a breathless, unnatural stillness. A tremor shivered across the land—so faint at first that only Rhael felt it, corruption pulsing under his skin like a warning drum.
Then the sky shifted.
Clouds peeled away from the heavens in spiraling arcs, pulled upward by invisible threads. Light bled out of the atmosphere until only a deep, bruised twilight remained. The stillness became suffocating, the world holding itself tight as if bracing for something inevitable and catastrophic.
Gabriella wiped ash from her lips, every sense on high alert. Her heartbeat felt too loud. Too exposed.
“Something’s wrong,” she whispered.
“No,” Tristan corrected, his
