The city still glowed with the warmth of memory.
Not with the firelight of torches nor the fury of stormlight, but something older, quieter—more sacred. It was a glow woven not of heat, but of remembrance. A soft, persistent luminescence that curled like mist around the crumbling stones of the Crownless City. Memory, it seemed, had taken root. It clung to the broken arches like ivy, wound itself through the shattered remnants of cathedrals and toppled towers. It pooled in sunken courtyards where blood had dried, lingered in empty windows like a ghost waiting to be seen. It pressed itself into cracks shaped by time and ruin, and where magic once sparked wild and unbound, now it hummed low and steady—like breath held between heartbeats.
At the heart of it all pulsed the Circle.
