The silence after the Spire’s fall was almost unbearable.
Not because it was empty—but because it was full.
Full of everything we had lost.
Full of everything we still didn’t know how to carry.
I sat on the shattered ridge, ashes curling in the breeze around me. The ruins of the Hollow Spire lay in the valley below—no longer a monument to cruelty, but a graveyard of ghosts. And yet... it wasn’t grief that weighed on me now.
It was peace.
And peace, I was learning, could be terrifying.
“You’re not bleeding,” Kael said behind me.
I smirked. “No. Just burnt to the soul.”
He dropped beside me with a soft grunt, his shirt torn, chest streaked with dried blood and soot. His muscles flexed subtly as he leaned back, eyes tracing the skyline where the tower once stood. “Looks better withou
