The city lay in ruins, but it was not dead.
Lyla stood at the edge of what had once been a great civilization, its blackened spires piercing the sky like the ribs of a beast long decayed. A jagged path led into the heart of the forgotten city, where the weight of something ancient pressed against her skin like unseen hands.
She inhaled deeply.
The air here was wrong.
Not stale. Not rotten.
But empty.
It held no scent of life. No trace of time. As if nothing had ever lived here or if something had, it had been erased so completely that even the memory of its existence had been swallowed by the void.
The Marked Ones stood behind her, their silver eyes flickering with unease. They were warriors, born for battle, bred for war. But even they sensed the unnatural stillness, the unnatural
