Kaelen stepped out of the apothecary and into the cool, ash-dusted air of the village square. The ruins around him, once the site of a brutal, frenzied battle, now felt like a tapestry of lingering energy. Every burnt timber and cracked stone held a microscopic residue of the struggle—the psychic imprint of the Jurang’s chaotic hunger and his own deliberate, stabilizing counter-force.
He closed his eyes, focusing not on his physical surroundings, but on the hum that vibrated in the marrow of his bones. He reached out with his mind, treating the ambient magic as if it were a physical extension of his own nervous system.
"Everything is a vibration," Kaelen whispered, his voice barely audible over the distant groaning of the mountains.
He lifted his right hand, palm upward. A cluster of gl
