The climb back from the foundation felt like a regression, a slow, grueling movement from the frozen, iron-scented truth of the deep-vaults back into the curated, perfumed lies of the upper palace. With every step I took, the weight of what I had seen—what I now knew—settled into my bones like lead. I wasn't just walking; I was radiating. My magic, that unfiltered pulse of raw, surging life, was no longer something I was trying to suppress. It was an open circuit, and it was reaching out, tasting the architecture of the palace and finding it wanting.
I could feel the energy humming beneath my skin, a rhythmic, deep-seated thrum that made the very air in the stone stairwell ripple like heat over pavement. It wasn't just an internal sensation anymore; it was an external imposition. Where I
