Heaven did not arrive with fire.
It arrived with certainty.
The first sign was silence.
Not the quiet of night. Not the calm of snowfall. This was a deeper wrongness—an absence of birdsong, of wind, of even the mountain’s slow, patient breathing. The stars above Blackthorne flickered as if something behind them had blinked.
Kael felt it before the wards screamed.
“You feel that?” he murmured.
I nodded slowly. The shadow within me tightened, not in fear—but in recognition.
They have stopped arguing about you, it said. They have chosen.
The Great Bell of Blackthorne erupted in a single, violent toll.
Wards flared in blinding rings of silver-gold across the keep as every ancient protection tried to rewrite itself at once.
Then the sky opened.
Not tore.
Opened.
Like a doorway reme
