SAGE
I heard them before I reached the barren lands. Sounds clawing at me.
The ancient blood in me did that, allowing my ears to tremble with it; something that had no mercy in how clearly it perceived suffering, it stripped away the option of ignorance.
Darius had been right then.
Cries that were no longer voices, screams that had forgotten language, wails stretched thin by torment.
Souls, Darius had said. Souls the Queen had chained between worlds, refusing them passage because she was still feeding on what little essence remained of them. Draining them. Hoarding them. Using their agony like fuel.
I slowed, then stopped altogether at the edge of the land.
The ground here was wrong—I've always known, but seeing it through fresh eyes was something else.
It was ashen and cracked, as though the earth itself had tried to crawl away and failed. The air smelled like rot and old magic, like grief that had soaked too deeply into stone to ever be scrubbed clean.
