Blackthorne should have fallen silent after the gates closed.
Instead, it breathed.
Smoke thinned across the valley as the last enforcement portal snapped shut with a sound like a wound sealing. Wolves paced the line of shattered stone where Heaven’s geometry had failed, blood dark on fur, eyes bright with a disbelief that tasted like victory and dread all at once. Blackthorne’s guards lowered their weapons slowly, as if afraid the sky might change its mind if they moved too fast.
Kael stood amid the debris, human again, chest heaving, hands shaking where claws had been moments before.
“They will call this an anomaly in their reports,” Rowan muttered from the wall. “A localized protocol failure.”
Kael wiped blood from his temple.
“They will call it a contamination point.”
Myra’s bla
