POV: Aria
The morning after the shadow ritual, the village was too quiet.
I stood at the edge of the healer’s tent, sunlight pressing against my skin like a question I couldn’t answer. The world looked the same—dewy grass, rustling trees, smoke curling from early cooking fires—but everything inside me felt... altered.
I wasn’t sure if I was still me.
The shadow-self—the fractured part of my soul I had unintentionally birthed—was gone. At least, that’s what Kael said. But I could still feel the faint pulse where she’d lived, a bruise on my spirit. I wasn’t whole. Not yet.
But I was alive. And Kael had come for me.
That mattered more than I wanted to admit.
He stood nearby, his arms crossed as he watched the pack trickle through the clearing. His shirt clung to his chest, sweat from t
