Chapter 28: The Blood Between Moons
Silence.
A silence so heavy it pressed against the chest like a second heartbeat.
Kairo opened his eyes to the wreckage of the Temple of Echoes. The once-living walls now lay cold and dead, their faint red glow replaced by the gray stillness of ash. The fog had thinned into ghostly wisps, swirling lazily around fragments of obsidian and bone. The moon above the Vale hung shattered in the sky — fractured, bleeding silver light across the ruins.
He tried to rise, but pain carved through his ribs, raw and electric. His body was no longer his own — he could feel two heartbeats thundering in his chest. One, his own. The other… the King’s.
“Easy, brother,” Kaelen’s voice came, soft but strained.
Kairo turned. Kaelen knelt a few feet away, blood streaking
