The winds howled through the tangled forest, biting against Anaxia’s skin like teeth. Each step she took sent a jolt of pain through her legs, her body struggling to hold itself upright. The absence of her core left her fragile—drained and teetering on the edge of collapse—but her resolve was unshaken. Her body may have been breaking, but her soul burned with a mother’s rage and a vow carved deeper than fate.
The trees around her groaned under the weight of storm clouds above. The sky was perpetually grey now, a canvas of unrest that mirrored the slow decay of the world. Birds no longer sang. Rivers flowed sluggishly, tainted with energies out of balance. Magic itself was turning on the very beings that once commanded it.
And Anaxia walked through it all.
She kept her pace steady, her b
