Verus sat in silence for a long while, the weight of everything he had heard the day before pressing heavily on his chest.
His mind swirled with questions—about this frozen wasteland, about the so-called Dawn Village, and about Lucian, the boy who claimed to be its leader yet carried himself with the calm authority of someone much older.
He didn't want to believe it, any of it. But every time he replayed Lucian's words, his instincts told him they weren't lies.
That truth was the most terrifying of all.
The creak of the door snapped him out of his spiral.
Before Verus could even turn his head, a man was suddenly in front of him—sitting with one leg crossed over the other, his pale white hair almost glowing under the morning light, his eyes black pools with stark white pupils that seemed to pierce right through him.
Verus's arms were seized in a firm grip before he could react, raised and examined like a doctor inspecting a patient.
"What the hell—?!"
