The night was thick with frost, the kind that clung to every breath like a warning. Jon Hale stood at the edge of Maelin's ruined study, the shattered remains of her spellbooks scattered beneath his boots. Most had burned in the Order's first raid, their ashes swept away in the chaos that followed—but not all. One leather-bound tome had remained hidden, wedged behind a false panel in the stone hearth. It reeked of wild magic and memory, the kind of ancient knowledge Maelin had kept even from Elias.
Jon's fingers trembled as he flipped the brittle pages. Symbols danced in ink and blood—some faded with time, others pulsing faintly with enchantment. His eyes narrowed, locking onto the prophecy written in a trembling, half-mad scrawl:
"When the five are bound, the sixth will rise.
Born not of love, but of the shadow's lie.
The mirror soul shall seek her light—
And if the white wolf chooses wrong... the world shall die."
His breath caught. "The mirror soul..."
Nyros.
He was the sixth. Not
