CHAPTER 125THE SILENCE UNDER THE CITYThe cells beneath Nyxara did not feel built for prisoners. They felt built for containment. Stone corridors stretched endlessly beneath the Dominion like buried veins, damp walls swallowing sound while iron lanterns burned with pale crimson fire that never flickered naturally. The deeper levels smelled wrong. It wasn’t blood or rot, but something older than that. Like water beneath ancient foundations for too many centuries. Sera woke first. Pain hit her immediately. Her wrists burned where iron restraints locked her to the floor, thick black chains etched with Dominion markings she didn’t recognize. The metal pulsed faintly against her skin every time she pulled against it. “Oh, absolutely not,” she muttered hoarsely.The chain didn’t move. Her head throbbed violently. She remembered flashes of the ballroom. Fire. Screaming. Mira shouting Tovin’s name. Then darkness.“Sera?” A voice echoed faintly from

CHAPTER 127THE THINGS BURIED INSIDE BLOODThe corridor remained silent after Cassian spoke. Not the ordinary silence. The suffocating kind. The kind that settled into people’s ribs and stayed there. Mira stared at Cassian through the bars of her cell, trying to process what he had just said. When the final Seal awakens. Not if. When.“You’re talking about Rylan like he’s already gone,” she said carefully.Cassian’s gaze shifted toward her again, calm as ever. “Not gone.” A slight pause. “Transcending.”“That sounds like cult nonsense,” Sera muttered immediately. One of the cloaked figures behind Cassian shifted slightly at the word cult. Tiny movement. Barely visible.Cassian either didn’t care or expected it. “The Dominion fears words it doesn’t understand,” he said mildly. “That has always been its weakness.”“No,” Tovin replied. “I’m pretty sure the weakness is whatever deeply wrong thing is happening inside your head.”To everyone’s surprise, Cassian actually laughed softly. “You

CHAPTER 129 SOUND BENEATH BELLS Far above the prison, the city still moved, still breathed through its endless bridges and black stone arteries, but something underneath it had begun pressing upward like a heartbeat too large for the body containing it. Dominion patrols crossed the upper terraces in tighter formations now. Lanterns flickered strangely along the eastern districts. Even civilians noticed it. And beneath the city, the bells had finally stopped. The silence afterward felt worse. Rylan stood near the entrance of the underground safehouse while the others argued quietly behind him. Nobody had slept. Not really. The shaking beneath the city had reached them even down here, rattling dust from the ceiling stones and making the old pipes groan like something alive moving through them. Lucien rolled one of the maps shut sharply. “The eastern districts are closing.” “They’re gathering,” Mara agreed. Fae Kael said quietly from the doorway. “They’re preparing.” Rylan b

CHAPTER 131PULSES UNDER THE THRONEThe pulse reached the Dominion Palace three minutes before the alarms did.Seraphine felt it while standing alone in one of the room’s balcony, one hand resting lightly against the cold black railing overlooking Nyxara. The city stretched endlessly below her, layered in silver bridges and crimson lanternfire beneath the night sky, beautiful in the way dangerous things often were, then the floor beneath her feet trembled. She went still immediately. It wasn’t because she was afraid, but because she knew it all too well. Far below the palace foundations, something ancient had shifted in its sleep.The tremor faded after several seconds, but the air remained wrong afterward. Heavy. Pressurized. Like the city itself had begun holding its breath. Behind her, the room doors opened sharply. Lady Vaelith entered first. She rarely moved carelessly, but tonight her pace was faster than usual, dark robes shifting around her like disturbed smoke. Dorian followe