Theron POV
The air still trembled when the guards dragged the bodies away. The scent of blood and ash clung to my coat like a confession.
The room was unrecognizable — a hollow, blackened shell, stone peeled open like wounded skin. Every mark on the wall shimmered faintly where her light had touched it. She stood in the center, hands still glowing gold, breath ragged but steady.
Power radiated from her in slow, rhythmic pulses. The kind that doesn't roar — it breathes. Every inhale she took rebalanced the air. Every exhale bent it.
I'd seen many kinds of power. Controlled. Chaotic. Manufactured. Hers was different. It didn't destroy because it wanted to. It destroyed because it remembered.
When she looked up at me, the light in her eyes wasn't human. It was something older — recognition mixed with grief. Like she was seeing me and every version of me that had ever existed.
"You should go," she said softly.
