Kael's POV
The world is quiet.
Too quiet.
After the roar of thunder, after the heavens bled red and the castle split open like a wound in the earth, silence. The kind that hums, thick and wrong. The kind that means something sacred has died.
I push aside a slab of shattered marble and drag myself out from beneath the rubble. The air tastes of metal and smoke, of burnt stone and blood. My armor hangs in pieces from my body, edges melted, veins glowing faintly with my own unstable aura.
I breathe in and immediately regret it. My ribs ache with every movement.
Lucien is gone.
I don't need sight or proof. The gods' bond, the ancient pulse that once tied every bloodline of Veyra to his throne, has vanished. The world feels… hollow without it.
But if he's gone
Then what is this darkness crawling through the air?
