The world was burning quietly.
Damian could hear it — the way the wind sighed through the fractured branches, the way the ashes of the fallen trees whispered against the soil. The forest no longer smelled of life. It smelled of endings — of charred moss and fading blood.
He rose slowly, his muscles screaming in protest, his hands streaked with soot and crimson. The earth around him was scorched, a blackened scar where the Rift had collapsed. No light. No warmth. Only a silence that pressed down like a curse.
He called her name again.
"Aria."
Nothing answered. Not the bond. Not the wind. Not even the echoes that once haunted his dreams.
The mate mark on his chest was gone. Not faded — gone. As if it had been carved out of him. He pressed his palm to the place where it used to burn, but there was only cold skin and the hollow ache beneath.
She was gone.
And yet — she wasn't.
