POV: Queen Amethyst Walker Reynolds
Eight months of silence.
In the world of the North, eight months can feel like a lifetime. We watched the seasons bleed into one another—the harsh winter snows melting into a vibrant, emerald spring, and now the golden heat of summer washing over the Royal Valley. For eight months, the "Obsidian Breach" remained a memory, a phantom ache in the earth that hadn't recurred since the night the Void-Titan was repelled from our borders.
We knew Gretchen was still out there. The Shadow-Ways don't just disappear, and a woman like her doesn't crawl into a hole to die quietly. Every morning, I woke up and reached out with my threads, searching for that jagged, sulfurous frequency. Every morning, I found only the humming peace of the ley-nodes.
We prayed to the
