Chapter 8. The Reclaiming

By morning, the fortress was already deciding what last night meant.

Omens never ask permission; they root themselves in whispers and spread before the truth can draw breath.

I stood in the Heart Hall, barefoot on obsidian glass polished to a black mirror. The air shimmered with the aftertaste of magic, threads of moonlight hanging like cobwebs caught in stillness. The walls whispered as they always did, their etched prayers left by wolves long turned to dust.

Kael knelt at the chamber’s edge, ringed by runes and flickering glyphs. His body was still, but his chest rose with shallow, uneven breaths. The ritual had been working through him since before dawn—meant to seal the wound left by the bond’s severance and draw out the poison buried in him by the Dusk Spire blade.

He had not woken since we returned.

The Seers had told me his survival no longer belonged to medicine. It belonged to me.

And to the Moon.

I stepped into the circle.