The room was quiet in the strangest way.
Celeste lay in the center of the room, her body pale beneath pale sheets, looking more like someone asleep than someone whose soul had been stolen. Seraphina stood beside the bed, her hands hovering just over Celeste's chest, where a soft flame burned through her palms like a living pulse.
It was not a fire.
It was warm.
A small, steady phoenix glow wrapped around Celeste's heart in a thin ring of gold, stabilizing what little was left behind.
"I won't let your body forget you," Seraphina whispered, her voice barely louder than breath. "Just… come back."
Across from her, Auren knelt on the floor with the marble sphere and the pale blue feather laid out side by side. The marble no longer shone the way it once did. Thin cracks webbed across its surface, dull light leaking through like a dying heartbeat.
The feather, however… glowed.
