Chapter 56. Dawn of Reckoning

The dungeon lay steeped in silence, a silence so thick it pressed against Ismeria’s fur like a second skin. She lay sprawled across the wet stone, chains cold and biting around her limbs, breath shallow as the last strands of wolfsbane seeped through her blood. A faint dripping echoed from somewhere above, the same rhythmic sound that had haunted her ears for days—maybe longer. Time had dissolved into a haze of pain and confinement. Her muscles twitched occasionally, involuntarily, caught between healing and collapse.

Then, in the breathless dark of night—at the hour when even the guards had begun to nod off at their posts—a shadow slipped through the barred entrance with barely a whisper. The figure moved like smoke, tall and broad-shouldered, wrapped in a black cloak that swallowed the firelight.

Ismeria’s ears flicked at the scent before she registered the sound. Something… familiar. Distant, buried under six years of terror and rage. Her tail gave a slight twitch as