Chapter 114. The Eclipse Trial

The Moon Hall had never looked so empty. No thrones, no banners, not even the bowl. The ceiling had been peeled away by light until only the sky remained, and that sky was wrong. The Moon’s face was half-shadowed, half-blood, then both, then neither. An eclipse—slow, deliberate—as if someone had curled a palm over the night and left space between fingers.

Elen stood alone, no crown, no script. “The last test,” she said, and I felt the words climb into my bones and start making shelves. “Not of power. Of relinquishment.”

Kael’s fingers tightened around mine. He didn’t let go. He didn’t ask to. He couldn’t fix this part for me and didn’t try.

The floor shivered into two paths.

On the left, I saw the pass at Yarrow Gate—the only safe way out if the river rose and the eastern dams failed. Workers with rope and curses. A child in a red scarf sitting to count wagons. The warded stone under the bridge showed a crack like a vein; if it split, the winter caravans woul