GRACE POV
The guardian’s blank face watched me without blinking, without shifting, without making even the smallest human mistake that would have given me something familiar to hold on to. Nothing about its posture was readable. Nothing about its presence felt like any creature with a heartbeat. It was simply aware, waiting, holding itself in a stillness so absolute it made the air thicken around us. Every instinct I had screamed that one wrong move would turn that stillness into violence.
And of course that would happen on my day. Not on Sarah’s watch, not on Timothy’s dramatic existence—no. The glowing druid death-thing wanted to stare me down like I was the problem. Typical.
Hakira was fully merged inside me, sharpening my senses until even the dust in the air felt like it had weight
