Nobody slept the rest of that night.
By dawn, the full council had reassembled in the same cleared storage room, Bellan's parchments spread across the table alongside his hastily written translation, Mira sitting close beside Gad with her hands still trembling faintly from the previous night's episode.
"Read it again," Rennick said. "Slowly. I want to make sure I understand exactly what this means."
Bellan complied, his voice hoarse from exhaustion and repetition. "The mirrored path does not end the connection. It transforms it. The severing completes only when both bound souls stand again at the source, together, and choose freely to release what the binding created."
"So we didn't finish it," Doran said, voice heavy with the weight of understanding. "We thought we did. We celebrated
