The sky was still broken.
Kael felt it long before he saw her.
The land itself trembled under the weight of her power, the air thick and suffocating, charged with something ancient and wrong. The closer he got, the harder it became to breathe—not from exhaustion, but from the overwhelming force pressing against his very soul.
Aria was near.
And so was he.
Kael stepped into the ruined forest, his boots crunching against shattered earth and splintered wood. The devastation stretched for miles—trees uprooted, the ground torn open in jagged scars, the sky above swirling with unnatural darkness.
At the center of it all—
She stood.
Aria.
But not the Aria he knew.
Her figure was rigid, almost unnaturally still, her body surrounded by a shifting aura of silver and shadow intertwined. Her
