CHAPTER 44:
Dawn broke soft and golden over the valley, and the silence that settled over the ridge was not the heavy, waiting silence of fear—it was the quiet, breathless hush of a world remade. Below, the enemy camp was empty. Thousands of weapons lay scattered across the grass, abandoned in the night. The siege towers stood dark and lifeless, the great iron ram half-buried where it had been dragged and then left behind. No smoke rose from the Council’s pavilion. No horns blared. No eyes watched from the treeline. They were gone. And they were not coming back—not today, not tomorrow, not until they could gather enough strength to crush us once and for all.
I stood on the highest wall of the fortress, Kael at my left, Cole at my right, looking out over the empty valley. The wind carried
