Darkness didn't vanish—it shifted. It breathed.
Kael woke to the sound of the world rebuilding itself, slow and uncertain, like a wounded creature learning to walk again. The air was heavy with ash and light; the sky above him was no longer black, but veined with cracks of violet that pulsed like a heartbeat. His heartbeat.
He dragged in a breath that burned like fire and frost all at once. His hand pressed into the ground, and it trembled beneath his touch. The surface was neither earth nor stone—something in between, alive, watching. Reality had become soft here, pliant, as though the rules were waiting for him to decide what they would be.
"Lyria…" His voice was raw, torn from somewhere deep.
For a moment, silence answered. Then—soft, faint, like the whisper of wind through glass—her scent.
