The stone mattered because the world had tried to make a child's death sound procedural.
A stone could be broken. A grave could be hidden. A truth with witnesses was harder to bury cleanly.
Sera's memorial stone began to crack.
Every line across it felt personal.
Seraphine.
Valdrake.
Arkhen.
Not an accident.
The Echo Warden's chest bell opened wider, trying to swallow the words before they finished becoming public history. The hall watched in the awful silence that always arrived when truth became dangerous enough for witnesses to regret surviving.
No one moved first.
That was the mercy of shock.
Then Aiden's light struck the stone.
Not the Warden.
The stone.
A thin golden shield formed over the inscription, catching the next crack before it reached the final sentence.
Not an accident held.
Aiden's jaw tightened. His shoulders shook with the strain of protecting evidence that condemned a noble house his route once needed as an enemy, not a wound.
