The summons was not by chime or by order. It was subtler, a shift in the Alpha's presence that vibrated through the Haven's emotional landscape. It was a feeling, a pull, a silent acknowledgment that attracted them not to the sterile command center or the comfortable common hall, but to what they called the Heartstone—a natural amphitheater deep within the mountain where a rift in the cavern ceiling gaped open to the sky. Tonight, the full moon, large and luminous, shone its silver light directly down onto the polished, central stone.
They came in silently, out of the shadowed halls. Selene, her shoulders tense under the weight of her secrets. Orrin, a storm contained in flesh, the resonance of his silent scream still clinging to him. Lyra, her analytical mind hunting for patterns within
