Kael woke to screaming.
Not the kind that echoed through halls or tore from a human throat.
This scream lived inside him.
It ripped through his chest as a blade dragged backward, tearing against the seal, against restraint, against the fragile illusion that control was still his.
He gasped, bolting upright.
The room was dark, silent, and normal. And yet his vision swam with red.
The hunger had not slept.
It coiled around his thoughts, slow and patient, a predator content to wait now that it knew he was weakening. Blood remembered blood. Power remembered release.
Kael pressed both palms flat against the floor, grounding himself through stone, through weight, through pain.
Breathe.
The seal pulsed. Once then twice. A third time—hard enough to make him cry out.
Cracks spread throug
