Emily Rosewood’s Point of View.
The Hollow – three nights after the Chainspire fell.
The Hollow had changed in our absence.
I knew it the moment my boots touched the moss-covered threshold that marked the entrance to the stone paths carved through the trees. The air was thick with tension—not fear, but expectation. The wolves had heard of the battle, of the victory, but more than that… they had felt the rift seal.
Even now, something old stirred in the soil.
A storm was coming.
I stood tall as I passed beneath the roots of the Grand Sycamore that marked the Hollow’s heart. Lyra walked at my side, hood drawn low. Brant and the remaining scouts flanked us in a tight formation. Their silence was not the silence of mourning—it was the silence of witnesses.
And at the stone stairs that l
