Chapter 88 - The Price of Power

The shards of stormlight still hovered in the air before them—weightless, glimmering fragments of judgment and redemption suspended in a space where breath itself seemed to falter. Each shard pulsed with a delicate, spectral rhythm, as though it mirrored the fragile heartbeat of its bearer. Selena's fingers remained curled tightly around her shard, the warmth of it seeping into her skin and deeper still—into the marrow of her bones, into the aching chambers of her soul. But it did not comfort. It did not soothe. It burned. A slow, merciless branding that etched its truth into her very essence, a reminder of everything she had endured and everything she had chosen.