The sky above the dam warped, a cold shadow swallowing the horizon. "We need to go. Now," Kael said, his voice flat and urgent. He grabbed Zion's arm, his grip surprisingly strong for a mortal seventy-year-old."But the canal, the people—" Zion protested, his fingers twitching with frantic indigo sparks. He stared at the creeping darkness in the north. "Master, we have to help them! The temperature is dropping again!""Isabella and Marcus can handle the canal," Kael interrupted, pulling Zion toward the stone-walled training courtyard behind the reservoir. "You are unraveling, Zion. If the darkness comes and your mind is split, you will destroy yourself before the enemy even touches you.""I can control it!" Zion insisted, his boots slipping on the wet clay as they reached the quiet, frozen clearing. "I held it back in the cave with Seraphina! I can do it again!""You didn't control it, Zion. You let Chen's ghost frighten

"We need to double the patrols," Kael said, his voice flat as he stared at the black screen. The purple words I see you, Sovereign still seemed to burn in his mind, a silent, mocking threat from the cold void. He turned to find Lyra, but her usual spot near the heavy metal door of the command room was empty. "Where did Lyra go?""She went down to the lower courtyard," Zion replied, rubbing his sore, cold shoulders. "She said she was going to bring up more firewood before the frost gets any worse. The wind is picking up.""She has been pushing herself too hard," Kael muttered, a sudden, cold tightness squeezing his chest. He grabbed his iron bar, the cold metal biting into his palms, and stepped out of the warm tower into the freezing night. "Should I come with you, Master?" Zion called out."No, stay with Seraphina and watch the monitors," Kael said, his boots already skidding on the icy metal stairs. "If that frequency blinks again

"We start again tomorrow," Kael had said, and today, they were doing exactly that. The gray soot of the ruined fields clung to Seraphina's boots as she organized the remaining storage crates in the lower courtyard. Her mechanical arm whirred, a quiet, rusty squeak repeating with every movement. Beside her, Elara was sorting through small leather bags of dried forest roots, her eyes still red from weeping over the lost crops."We have the salt Zion and you brought back," Elara said, her voice small and weary. "But without iron tools to clear the deep roots, we cannot expand the new plots. The wooden spades keep snapping against the frozen clay.""We will find a way," Seraphina replied, tightening a leather strap around a crate. "We always do."Before Elara could answer, the sharp, rhythmic blast of Isabella's warning horn echoed from the dam's main gate. Zion came skidding around the corner of the stone barracks, his hand