The moment I spoke my name, the world did not recognize it. It reacted.
The sound did not settle into silence, and it did not fade into the space between us as any ordinary name would, because the instant it existed, something far beyond the fractured bond answered it with a force that made reality itself feel unstable. The air tightened, not with pressure, but with resistance, as though the very structure of the world was rejecting the presence that name carried.
Kael did not rise. That was the first confirmation that nothing about this moment was normal.
Even as the system fractured further and the bond warped into something barely recognizable, he remained exactly where he was, his head lowered, his posture fixed in something that was no longer submission and no longer dominance, but
