"Three months," Ava said, staring at the cup of coffee going cold in her hands. "Three months of peace. I should have known it was too good to last."Kael sat across from her at the small kitchen table, the morning light making everything look soft and simple. Their house was nothing special. Just four walls and a roof, picked because it looked like every other house on the street. Normal. Ordinary. Safe.He had wanted that. After everything, he had wanted to wake up somewhere that didn't feel like a battlefield.The garden outside was growing too well. Plants that should take months to bloom had flowered in weeks. Small signs that even here, he couldn't fully hide what he was."We knew this would come eventually," he said."Knowing and feeling are different things."She was right. They always were.The summons had arrived at dawn. Not a physical thing—a pull in the fabric of reality, a voice that spoke directly into the mind. Emergency session. All council members required. No delays