The dawn never broke.
For three nights and three hollow dawns, the sky above the Silver Vale remained locked in twilight — a bruised horizon caught between the memory of day and the promise of night. The wind carried the scent of something ancient, heavy with iron and grief.
Kael stood at the edge of the ruined forest, his cloak torn, his skin marked by the faint glow of golden cracks spidering down his neck — remnants of power that refused to die with her. His gaze fixed on the distant mountain ridge, where smoke coiled from what had once been the sanctuary of the High Pack.
The world had changed. Or perhaps it was him.
The Alpha who once ruled with precision now moved like a shadow of his former self — silent, unyielding, but hollowed out from within. His wolf, once a raging inferno, now whispered with a colder voice. Each step he took left a faint shimmer of gold dust on the ground, a curse born of divine touch and mortal sin.
