The moment Kael said it did not belong to this world, something inside me answered with a certainty that felt older than my own existence.
The reaction was immediate and undeniable, because the truth did not awaken confusion within me, but recognition. Whatever had been sealed did not struggle to emerge, and it did not resist the truth. It responded to it, as though it had been waiting for that exact acknowledgment to be spoken aloud.
The bond did not hold under the weight of it. It fractured further. The pressure that had once controlled the space around us shifted violently, no longer measured or divided, but breaking into something raw and unstable, as though the balance it had maintained had been built on something that could no longer be sustained.
I felt it then, with a clarity th
