CHAPTER 163: THE SHADOW THAT DID NOT LEAVE

POV: Darius

“He did not choose to be absent, he chose defiance.”

That was the mistake everyone else made.

They thought refusal was the end of the story.

I felt it the moment the boy spoke, not the sound of his voice but the shape of it.

The way the world bent slightly to listen and then did not bend back.

Power usually announces itself with pressure. This did not. It settled like something deciding it would stay.

Interesting.

Hope rippled outward ...