KAEL'S POV
The light guttered like the last breath of a dying fire, leaving the chamber in a bruised half-glow. My vision went blurry, edges of everything rimmed in afterimages.
The figure stood perfectly still, hood fallen, their face bare to us.
Twisted.
Half their features were still the man I'd once known — sharp cheekbones, scar down the jawline. The other half… gods. Flesh like molten glass caught mid-drip, glowing faintly with veins of ember. The skin had hardened in places into black, stone-like plates, edges sharp as broken shale. Where his left eye had been, a thin line of fire pulsed, opening and closing like a lidless serpent.
Ayla's breath hitched behind me. Not fear. Recognition in pieces. "That… that's not possible."
His mouth twisted, and the ember-lit side cracked as it moved. "You sound like I did when it started."
I stepped between them, blade in hand before I'd even thought to draw it. "Stay where you are."
