The storm didn’t die down—it listened.
That hit Nyra before she could even wrap her mind around what she was seeing. Rain hammered the forest in thick, heavy sheets, but the wild violence of it had given way to something quieter, restrained. Like the sky itself understood there was a new law it needed to obey. Thunder didn’t claw across the clouds at random anymore; it rolled in steady, measured waves, slow as a giant’s heartbeat.
And under Nyra’s feet, the earth was still trembling.
Not from panic or confusion. From presence. Something enormous had woken up down in the roots of her world, and every instinct inside her screamed that things would never go back to the way they were.
No one in the field moved. Hundreds of armored warriors stayed kneeling, still as statues, heads bent, rai
