Emily Rosewood’s Point of View.
Raven Hollow and the North, nine weeks and eleven days after the gate closed
The smoke still lingered.
It clung to the shattered stones of the Hollow like ghosts mourning the dead. Ash drifted in lazy spirals from the broken canopy above, dusting the wounded and the survivors in a soft gray shroud. Fires crackled weakly in scattered corners of the courtyard where once we had gathered in unity.
Now only silence reigned.
I stood at the edge of the Well, eyes fixed on the faint spiral of runes still glowing at its sealed base. The stone had closed again, but the feeling had not left — that colossal mind buried beneath layers of memory and myth.
It still watched.
It still waited.
Golden threads of power pulsed faintly across my fingers. I had stopped try
