Chapter 93. When the Void Listens

The message spread faster than fire ever had.

The Severed Flame is coming.

By dawn the compound was already unraveling. Word leapt from apprentice to cook, from stablehand to scholar, twisting at every telling. Some claimed a warband of fifty had been seen near the southern glen, their glyphs carved twice over on each arm. Others swore the Flame had abandoned human forms entirely and were sending beasts marked with stolen sigils. By the third retelling, the number had grown to hundreds, a tide of fanatics burning their way north.

No one knew the truth, but no one doubted the intent. The Flame had always hunted for chaos, but this time was different. This time they were coming for something that had no shape.

Aria stood on the ramparts as the morning light fractured across the frost. She let the cold bite her fingers bare, searching for that subtle tremor in the air—the one she had felt on the ridge. But here in the compound it was drowned beneath fear