The silence after power is never still. It hums. It waits. It listens.
When I opened my eyes, the air itself seemed to breathe — shallow and broken, like it had lungs. The stone floor was cracked in a wide circle around me, lines spreading like veins through the walls. Ash hung in the air. The scent was sharp — burnt salt, metal, and something sweet underneath, like flowers left too long in the sun.
I was on the floor, knees scraped, palms open. The light from the marks was faint but steady — gold now, not silver. Fifteen of them, counting the newest one, still raw. It pulsed as if it had its own heart.
The room was wrong. I wasn't alone. Two guards lay unconscious near the door, one with a thin thread of smoke rising from his collar. The other was breathing, but his face was blistered where light had touched him. I hadn't meant to. I hadn't done anything.
Or maybe I had.
