[Emma's POV]
The silence the Elders left in their wake was a living, suffocating entity. It wasn't an absence of sound, but a presence—a heavy, toxic fog of betrayal and a death sentence that had seeped into the very plaster of the walls. The brothers stood frozen in the wreckage of their unity, the air still thick with the unsated urge for violence. Maddox’s accusation hung in the space between Ryder and Cain like a shard of poisoned glass, and Jaxon stood torn between them, his foundation crumbling beneath his feet.
I couldn't bear to look at any of them. The cold, prophetic words of the Elder echoed in my skull, a terrifying mantra. A throne of eternal night… or a grave to bury all worlds. The immensity of it was a physical weight on my chest, crushing the air from my lungs. I was no
