Forty-eight hours.
The countdown to the Architect’s ultimatum ticks away in the corner of every screen in the command center, a silent, digital guillotine. But in the courtyard of the Blackthorn Academy, time is measured not in hours, but in heartbeats.
Three hundred wolves stand in the concentric circles of the integration lattice. They are not moving. They are not speaking. They are breathing in perfect, synchronized unison, their eyes closed, their hands clasped. They are the living dampening grid.
I stand on the balcony overlooking them, my hands gripping the cold steel railing. Through the permanent merge, I feel every single one of them. I feel the deep, rhythmic pulse of Silas’s aging but unyielding magic. I feel the fierce, burning loyalty of Lyra. I feel the quiet, steady endur
