Ella's POV
I couldn't sleep.
After the storm faded and the rain turned to mist, I wandered the halls like a ghost. Remo hadn't returned. His scent had faded from the room, but I still felt him — under my skin, in my bones, in every breath I took that didn't feel like my own.
The whispers had started again. Not inside my head — in the castle itself.
Faint murmurs, soft like wind but sharper when you listened too long. Names I didn't recognize. A chant I couldn't understand. One word kept surfacing:
Guardian.
The walls didn't speak. I knew that. And yet...
I passed an old arched window. Fog clung to the glass like the claws of something waiting. My hand itched. Again.
The same sigil had burned into it a week ago when I'd stumbled too close to the Hollow Stone. It was faint now, like
