Seven days.
Seven days since the sky turned black at noon and the shadow army poured from the northern mountains and Arvella Cordova walked barefoot through a war and filled a thousand-year void with a hand extended and a strand rebraided and the simple, irrational, unkillable insistence that connection was stronger than emptiness.
Seven days since the battle ended not with a roar but with gold tears and wildflowers growing in the ashes.
Seven days since the world changed shape. And the world — as worlds always did — had woken up the next morning and presented an invoice.
The invoice, on this particular Tuesday, took the form of a stack of parchment eighteen inches high sitting on the oak desk in the Alpha house study, each sheet representing a problem that required the Ascendant's per
