The silence after a nightmare is always the loudest.
It rang in Kael's bones the moment he opened his eyes.
Blood dried beneath his nose. The sheets were tangled, soaked with sweat. His body ached—not from wounds, but from absence. His wolf had not returned.
Not fully.
It sat within him like a smothered ember—present, but distant. Watching. Waiting.
And outside, across the stone corridor, he could feel her. Lyra. Awake. Standing before the war table again, even before the dawn had bled into the sky.
She had barely spoken after his confession the night before. Had only looked at him with that strange fire—one that was not doubt, not even anger. But clarity.
She knew now that Vaelora wasn't just a shadow on the horizon.
She was real. And worse—she was reaching through the bond itself.
Kael didn't dress in armor. Didn't call for his council. He simply walked—bare-chested, still bleeding a little, still reeling—toward the room where she waited.
