The world had changed.
Or perhaps it was Damian who had.
The first thing he felt was the silence. It was vast and heavy — not the peaceful quiet of dawn, but the hollow stillness left behind when something sacred dies. The Vale was gone. The gods' realm dissolved. In its place stretched a barren field of frost and stone, glimmering under a pale, fractured sky.
He stood at the center of it, half-shifted — bare skin streaked with silver veins of light that pulsed faintly beneath the surface. His wolf was quiet inside him, subdued, almost reverent. The mark Aria once left on his chest was gone, yet something deeper burned there now — a thread of divine fire, faint but unyielding.
He took one slow breath. The air tasted of cold iron and rain. The world was still breathing, but differently — slower, older, uncertain.
She was gone again.
No— not gone. Changed.
