The storm had broken during the night. Rainwater still clung to the air, heavy with the scent of damp earth and charred timber. Each droplet slid from the cracked eaves of the safehouse and fell in rhythmic taps against the fractured stone floor. The sound was steady, almost ritualistic, as if the ruin itself whispered its grief.
The fire had long gone out. Only the faintest smoke lingered, a ghostly coil that refused to disperse. The air was cool, sharp with the metallic tang of wet iron and the faint acrid trace of scorched flesh that no one dared name.
Leo lay on his pallet, his chest bare, his body pale as bleached parchment. His breaths were shallow, fragile, as though each one might be his last. The lattice Owen had forged sprawled broken across the ground around him: copper wires tangled and blackened, sigils smeared into ruin by sweat and blood. Once, its coils had glowed with the sickly light of battle; now, it was nothing more than a carcass of desperate hope.
