[Emma's POV]
The revelation of Damon’s long-standing claim, a poison seeded in my childhood, had shifted the very ground beneath our feet. The air in the manor was now thick with a desperate urgency that choked out all other concerns. We were no longer hunters tracking prey; we were survivors staring at a sinking ship, and the lifeboats were on fire.
“There is one path left,” Cain announced, his voice stripped of all its usual bravado, leaving only a grim, hollow certainty. He stood amidst a chaos of open texts in the library, ancient volumes whose pages seemed to recoil from the very topic he sought. “The Sanguine Thread. A blood-tracing ritual, forbidden by the first Accords. It doesn’t just locate a person; it follows the psychic scent of a spell back to its point of origin. We would
