Night did not bring rest. It brought ghosts.
Kael sat alone in the dark, back against cold stone, breath shallow and controlled as if even breathing too deeply might tear something loose inside him. The estate slept. Servants moved quietly beyond the walls. Eron had finally fallen into an uneasy rest after the events in the square, exhaustion dragging him under despite Kael’s insistence on warding the room three times over.
Kael had not slept. He couldn’t because the moment silence settled, the memories came. Not dreams, not fragments but memories that are whole, intact, and merciless.
The killing fields had found him again. The sky had been red not metaphorically and not poetically. Red because the clouds burned, red because the land below reflected the fire, and red because the air it
