CHAPTER 34: SHADOW OF THE BRIDGE

The northern wastes are a frozen abyss, their ash-falling plains and jagged bone-spires swallowed by the shadow-realm rift’s hunger, its void a wound that bleeds starlight. My crescent mark blazes, a silver flame untainted, pulsing in time with the First Ones’ blade—its starlight-and-obsidian edge singing of ruin, a vow to shatter Voren’s relic, but its runes demand a heart, mine or his, a cost that burns in my soul. Cassia lies in my arms, her crimson aura a dying spark, her breath a faint whisper held by Vael’s psychic ward, her sacrifice—her life for my purity—a chain I cannot break. My lunar wings flare, claws gleaming, my Convergence form radiant but trembling, grief and fury a storm that threatens to consume me. Maddox’s shadows coil at our flank, his blood-soaked cloak clinging to his wounded frame, his star-flecked eyes burning with vengeance for his sister, stolen by Taryn’s betrayal. Sylvara’s vine-hair weaves fragile wards, her jade-green aura dim with exhaustion and guilt