The fires burned for three days before they finally began to die. What remained of the Hollow was a landscape of broken stone and soot. The air hung thick with smoke, the sky a dull gray bruise that never seemed to clear.
Kael walked through the ruins of the western wall, his steps slow, deliberate. Every piece of shattered stone and burned timber told a story—of loss, of survival, of the price he’d chosen to pay. His armor was scorched, his cloak torn to ribbons, but his eyes still burned crimson beneath the soot.
All around him, the people of the Hollow worked in silence. Soldiers stacked rubble into barricades, children carried buckets of water from the wells, and healers moved between the wounded who lay on makeshift beds. The smell of blood and smoke clung to everything.
Lira found
