Mira’s POV

The weight of the past days settled on my shoulders like armor I never asked to wear. I hadn’t slept. Not really. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Kael’s face, haunted, unreadable, half-formed in shadows. And then Cyrus’s steady, patient, offering something I didn’t know how to accept. I wasn’t running from them. I was running from myself.

I slipped past the watch post before dawn, wrapped in silence. The scent of pine and ash clung to the edges of the forest trail, a ...