Chapter 44. No Light Left in Them

The Council Hall was colder than he remembered. Its chill wasn’t born of weather—there was no wind beneath the Citadel’s stone spine—but from something deeper, a hollow grief that sucked the warmth from the air. Kael paused at the threshold, pressing a gloved hand to his chest as though he could still the ache that pulsed beneath his ribs. He inhaled, tasting dust and damp stone, and felt an old terror coil at the edges of his thoughts.

He slipped between the silent sentries at the arched entrance. Their armor was iron-black, featureless, as if fashioned by sleepwalkers dreaming of war. Helms concealed their faces; only narrow slits revealed eyes that tracked him like wolves restrained by invisible leashes. Not a flicker of movement passed between them when he entered. That lack of resistance was worse than open challenge—it told him his arrival had long been foreseen and that every creak of this place had whispered his coming to forces beyond his knowing.

He walked the