The world dissolved into a blur of motion and sound. I was not running; I was fleeing, a desperate retreat from the battlefield of my own mind. The stone corridors of the coven, my sanctuary for decades, became a claustrophobic tunnel, the walls pressing in, the torchlight seeming to mock me with its flickering, false warmth. I didn't stop until I reached the lowest level, the crypts, where the dead slept and the living rarely dared to tread. Here, in the cold, silent embrace of ancient stone and forgotten memories, I finally let the walls crumble.
Alexander breaks down.
It was not a quiet, dignified grief. It was a violent, cataclysmic event. A sound tore from my throat, a raw, animalistic howl of pure agony that echoed through the tombs, a sound that had not been heard from me since th
