The teleportation burn did not fade right away.
It clung to Damian's bones like an old fire, smoldering long after it had lost its light. He stepped onto the scorched marble of Donin's former central command, now little more than rubble repurposed with the imperial seal. The room had been rebuilt in the way that only war-torn capitals could be: too quickly, too cleanly, and smelling of sanitizer and control.
Ash still clung to the window ledges. The ether in the walls hadn't yet stabilized, pulsing faintly like a system relearning how to breathe. Outside, the banners of the Agaron resistance had been burned, stitched over with the imperial crest by the second night of occupation. Donin had fallen. Not with a cry, but with a series of quiet cuts, each one bearing the signature of someone who knew exactly where to break a kingdom.
And Damian had waited to come until the shard was gone.
