I wake to the smell of antiseptic, copper, and the sterile, recycled air of a UN medical transport.
My body feels like it has been crushed beneath a glacier. Every muscle aches with a deep, cellular exhaustion, and my left hand—the one I slashed to bleed the Resonance Catalyst into the Siberian scrubber—is heavily bandaged, throbbing with a dull, rhythmic agony.
But the physical pain is nothing compared to the silence in my head.
For three years, since the moment I merged with Kade and embraced my destiny as the Anchor, my mind has been filled with the deep, resonant hum of the earth. I could feel the tectonic plates shifting, the roots of the ancient oaks drinking water, the steady, rhythmic pulse of the ley-lines beneath the soil. It was a constant, comforting presence. It was my moth
