The heavy doors leading to the eastern threshold groaned as they slid apart, a sound of splintering, ungreased wood that set my teeth on edge. It was the sound of a kingdom that had forgotten how to maintain itself—or perhaps, a kingdom that no longer possessed the resources to bother.
As I walked out toward the light, fragmented memories pulsed through my mind like a low-grade fever: recollections of sun-drenched, vibrant royal gardens that hummed with actual life, a stark, golden contrast to the grey, sterile reality of the present. Each step forward felt like tearing away a raw layer of my own skin. The beautiful, impossible flashes of the past I had seen in my childhood dreams were actively colliding with the cold, clinical whispers of Seth and Shay behind me. They spoke in those low,
