Morning of Fifteen Shadows
The world awakened in color.
Dawn swept across Blackthorn City in the brushstrokes of a painter, coating rooftops with golden light and rousing the scent of the night-blooming flowers still holding to the dawn. The sky was a canvas of pale blue with silver streaks of rose and gold, clouds drifting across the horizon. The calls of birds from faraway gardens plucked their song through the rustle of leaves against the wind.
The Blackthorn Duchy, seat of secret power in Moonstone Kingdom, glimmered in that light. And in its noble Nova Mansion—an estate spreading whitewashed walls and crimson rooftops—life pulsed. Guards relieved guards along the gates. Servants cleaned dew-wet paths.
But farther within the mansion, in a walled wing where silence reigned supreme, one room pulsed with the vibrations of another sort of life.
