The Silence After
When Lena opened her eyes, the world was not the same.
The cavern still hummed with the aftershocks of her scream. The three thrones loomed in silence, their phantom guardians gone, yet their power lingered in the air like smoke after a fire.
She lay on the cold stone floor, trembling. Her skin glowed faintly — not just with flame, but with streaks of shadow crawling like ink beneath her veins, and a faint shimmer of bone-white lines across her collarbone.
She touched her chest and gasped. The mark was no longer a single crown.
It was three. Interlocked. Shifting. Alive.
Her breath hitched. “What… what have I become?”
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Dominic’s Fear
Dominic was the first to move. He dropped to his knees beside her, his golden aura still flickering with exhaustion from the fig
