Kael moved through the blood-soaked field with the silence of a shadow. Bodies lay strewn across the grass like broken dolls, faces frozen in death's last question. The stink of burning flesh and wet iron made his throat tighten. Smoke curled into the dawn sky in thin gray ribbons, as if mourning the dead below. He did not mourn them. There was no time for that.He stepped over the corpse of a soldier who had once worn the royal crest. The sigil had been slashed, barely visible under the smear of dried blood. Kael's boots crushed fragments of shattered spears and brittle bone. The sounds of crows echoed in the distance, their calls hoarse and cruel.The battle had ended hours ago, but the memory of it burned fresh in his mind. The way his blade had sunk into the commander’s chest. The way his heart had pounded as he made his choice. He had not hesitated. Hesitation had no place in war.He paused at the edge of the ridge where the hill dipped into the valley. A blackened banner snapped

The wind shifted. Kael stopped in his tracks, every muscle tightening. A scent hung in the air, metallic and old, like rusted chains. He turned his head slowly toward the dense patch of trees rising along the slope. Something was watching.He stepped forward, keeping low, his boots soundless against the pine needles. The forest here felt different, like it had been holding its breath for centuries. The deeper he moved into it, the more the silence wrapped around him like a noose.Then he saw it.A clearing, no larger than a peasant's hut, ringed with stones blackened by age. In the center stood a tree unlike the others. Twisted. Pale. Leafless. Its bark peeled like scabbed skin, and its roots curled out like claws. Beneath it, a patch of earth darker than the rest. Freshly turned.Kael crouched beside it. The ground was damp and warm. Someone had dug here. Recently. He pressed his fingers into the soil, and the warmth sank into his bones like a whisper from something buried.A crow sc

The skies over Eldhollow had turned the color of wet ash by the time Kael reached the last stretch of the forest path. His cloak clung to his skin with cold sweat, his limbs heavy but alive with the heat of purpose. He had not stopped since leaving the clearing, not after what he had seen. Not after the shadow spoke his name.He no longer ran from what hunted him. He was running toward it.The scent of pine and damp stone thickened in the air. Between the trunks ahead, the outline of a moss-covered ruin emerged. Kael slowed. This was the place. Exactly as it had looked in the vision that tore through his mind the night before—broken archways, ancient stones wrapped in ivy, and the iron door embedded deep into the earth, half buried and waiting.He stepped into the ruin.Silence swallowed him whole. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath. He moved through the shattered remnants of what had once been a temple, each step crunching over roots and fallen leaves. Something thrummed beneath

The closer Kael moved toward Haldrim, the louder the city screamed.The gates were already splintered, shattered wood scattered like bones across the road. Smoke curled from broken watchtowers, and the smell of blood hit him even before the heat did. Bodies lay everywhere. Soldiers. Children. Merchants with blades still in their hands. The street had become a grave.Lira grabbed his arm before he could step past the gate. “Think,” she said, voice low. “We are not here to save a city. We are here to keep you alive.”Kael looked into the inferno. “This is where I was born. My mother died in that tower. My father bled for these people.”“And they would all die again if you fall here. You are not ready to face what waits inside.”“I cannot turn back.”Lira searched his eyes, then sighed. “Then I’ll get you through it. But if you hesitate, even once, we both die.”He nodded, and they slipped into the ruins together.Haldrim had fallen hard. The upper levels of the citadel were crumbling, t

They left the Archive behind as dawn broke over a dying forest.Kael and Lira stepped into a world that no longer felt familiar. The trees no longer whispered. They watched. The wind no longer brushed. It pressed. Something had shifted the moment they emerged, and the sky had changed color with it—less blue, more silver. Pale and cold.Lira walked slightly ahead again, silent, her hands gripping the scroll she had taken from the Archive. Kael glanced at her, trying to read what had changed. She was always hard to read. But now, she seemed harder. Sharper.“What did the Mirror Vault show you?” he asked.She didn’t answer right away.“I saw what I feared most,” she finally said. “And it didn’t kill me.”Kael wanted to press, but something about her voice warned him off. He nodded, falling into step beside her as the path curved toward the edge of the wood.Before them lay a canyon.Beyond it stretched a vast shimmer of light.It wasn’t water. And it wasn’t land.The Glass Sea.Kael step