Aria’s POV

The world was bleeding.

I felt it before anyone spoke a word—before the alarms rang, before the warriors shouted orders, before the ground trembled hard enough to send cracks through stone.

It was like a slow siphoning beneath my skin.

As if something vast and merciless had sunk its claws into the bones of the earth and was drinking.

I pressed my palm to my chest, breath hitching as the air around me grew heavy, charged with wrongness. Magic—wild, ancient ...