Kael’s POV

The council gathered before dawn. The breach had changed everything, though no one said it aloud. Cyrus opened the meeting with numbers, patrol gaps, and collapse radius. The reports sounded routine, stripped of panic by discipline. Only the silence between statements betrayed the weight behind them.

taKael sat near the far end, his notes blank. He replayed the image of the boundary tree, the faint mark beneath the bark, the light catching it like memory. He’d wiped it clean ...