The world dissolved into a corridor of silent, rushing shadow. Valerius did not walk; he simply moved, and I with him, enveloped in the cold, star-lined fabric of his cloak. The snarling wind and the biting snow ceased to exist. There was only the whisper of ancient power and the steady, resolute beat of my own heart, a drum counting down the final moments of a tyrant’s reign. It was not a journey of miles, but a tearing of the veil between one reality and another.
We emerged not into the blizzard, but into a place of profound stillness. A hidden sanctuary at the very heart of the territory, a place I had never known existed. We stood in a perfect circle of black, ancient stones, and in the center grew a tree that seemed woven from moonlight and winter frost. Its vast branches reached for
