ground did not quake when the seal broke.
The stars did not fall. The skies did not split.
But something fundamental shifted.
A thread, once taut and quiet beneath the world’s heartbeat, hummed like a drawn bowstring. It wound through every being who had ever touched her life—twisting through pain, promise, prophecy—and it pulled taut now with a song only a few could hear.
One of them was Alex.
He awoke violently, flame crackling in his veins, eyes wide and burning with golden light. His wings—long dormant—snapped open in a burst of heat, scorching the stone around him. But he didn’t feel the fire.
Only her.
Rose.
Not just her presence.
Her becoming.
He staggered to his feet, breath catching, and for the first time in years, the fire inside him wasn’t his own. It danced with a se
