Kael’s POV

The morning began with silence. Mira was still confined, and the hall outside her chamber was guarded under Seraphine’s command. I hadn’t slept. Reports covered the table, but none mattered until the scouts arrived. Their eyes told me before their words did that something had shifted at the southern border.

They said the trees were burned, not by fire, but by something older. They carried a sketch of the sigil, the same one carved into trunks and stones. The lines were exact, ...