Chapter 50 — The Cost of Letting Go
The consequences did not arrive all at once.
They came unevenly like cracks spreading through glass, invisible until the light struck them at the wrong angle. Hairline fractures that looked harmless until pressure found them. Until weight leaned in.
Three days after the amphitheater, the first Guardian resigned.
His name was Tavian, a steady presence who had stood watch through the earliest fractures, when the world had first begun to hum out of tune. He was not charismatic or feared or particularly loud. He had been reliable, which Elowen had come to understand was rarer.
He arrived at dawn, when the corridors were still cool and the stone smelled faintly of night rain. He submitted his sigil without ceremony, laying it across Elowen's desk with the care one might show a sleeping child. The metal glimmered once, then dulled, its resonance severed.
He bowed once to Elowen, then to Kael.
