The night air was thick with the remnants of smoke, ashes still curling upward from the smoldering ruins of the battlefield. The echoes of steel and claws had faded, but in their place came the unnerving silence of uncertainty.
Aria stood at the ridge, her heart still hammering from the clash. Every nerve in her body hummed with the bond, the tether to her triplets pulsing faintly through her chest like a fragile thread holding her to sanity. Yet beneath that pulse, a new unease writhed—a shadow woven into the bond itself, as though something foreign had tried to sink teeth into it during the fight.
Marcus was the first to approach her. His jaw was smeared with dried blood, his hair matted with soot. His golden eyes flickered with the steady calm he always tried to project, but the tension in his shoulders betrayed him.
"You're too quiet," he said softly, studying her.
Aria swallowed. "I felt something… when we struck the last blow together. Something tried to sever the bond."
