The world did not tremble.
It remembered.
That was the only way I could describe it—the deep, aching shudder that rippled through stone, sky, and blood all at once. Not an earthquake. Not a shockwave.
A memory waking up.
Far beneath Frostclaw’s mountains, something ancient shifted inside its chains.
The unbound across Blackthorne froze mid-step as the sensation rolled through them—wolves clutching their heads, shapewalkers losing form for a startled heartbeat, elders gasping as if air itself had grown heavier.
Kael grabbed my arm reflexively.
“That wasn’t the priests,” he said darkly. “That was… older.”
“Yes,” I whispered.
The shadow within me had gone terrifyingly still.
Heaven’s failsafe has inhaled its first breath in ten ages, it said. And it was never meant to wake while god
