Damien reaches the chamber too late.
He knows it the moment he steps through the broken threshold—before he sees the scorched silver veins in the stone, before he feels the residual heat still clinging to the air like the aftermath of a storm.
She was here.
Recently.
His boots crunch against fractured rock as he moves forward, every muscle tight, senses flaring. The chamber is wrong—too quiet, too orderly, like something has already passed judgment and moved on.
“Lila,” he calls, voice echoing unanswered.
No pull answers him.
No warmth.
Just absence.
His jaw tightens as he takes in the details: the split floor where the stone was forced apart, the faint marks of pressure near the edge—as if someone stood there fighting gravity itself.
And then he smells it.
Rowan.
The scent hit
