The darkness didn't fade. It shifted.
It rippled like liquid shadow, writhing around Kael's form as if alive, hungering. Every breath he took shuddered through the air, bending it—bending her. Lyria staggered backward, her chest burning, her heart screaming against the pull that tried to drag her toward him.
The Alpha she once knew stood half-consumed by something older than the moon itself. His eyes—once gold—burned now with fractured light, one a deep obsidian void, the other a gleaming ember that flickered between man and monster.
"Kael..." Her voice trembled, a prayer and a curse in one breath.
He didn't answer. The shadows clawed at his skin, curling like serpents along his arms. When he finally spoke, his words were both his own and not, layered with the echo of something ancient.
"You shouldn't have followed me here, Lyria."
The tone wasn't cruel—it was heartbreak disguised as warning. And that broke her more than any threat could.
