جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 60

I stared at Queen Elara like she was a hallucination born from bond fracture and exhaustion."You are dead," I said stupidly. "You died five years ago. Poison.""I got better." She swept into the tent with the confidence of someone who had never doubted her welcome anywhere. Behind her, twenty palace guards filed in, their movements synchronized and deadly. "Well, not better exactly. More accurately, I faked my death to escape my husband's increasingly erratic paranoia and have been building a resistance network ever since."Prince Darius looked like his entire understanding of reality had shattered. "Mother?""Hello, darling." She touched his face gently, and I saw tears glitter in her eyes before she blinked them away. "You have grown. All of you have. I wish I could have been there.""You were alive this entire time," Marcus said slowly, his voice flat with shock. "You let us think you were dead. Let Father spiral into madness from grief.""Your father's madness predated my 'death'

The explosion of multicolored light knocked everyone—enemy and ally alike—flat on their backs.I felt the power coursing through the bond, wild and immense, threatening to consume us all if we lost control for even a second. Through the connection, I sensed my mates struggling to contain the surge.Too much, Darius gasped through the bond. We cannot hold this—*We can,* I insisted, weaving our consciousnesses tighter together. *Trust me. Trust us.*The light condensed, focused, became a weapon of pure cosmic intention. Every corrupted soldier within a hundred yards convulsed as the Void infection burned from their bodies—not gently like my individual purges, but absolutely. Completely. Leaving no trace of darkness behind.Twenty soldiers collapsed, gasping, their eyes clearing.Then fifty.Then a hundred.The Void corruption was fleeing before our combined power like shadows before dawn."Impossible," Lady Seraphine breathed, staring at us with something between awe and terror. "That

We reached the palace's eastern wall three hours past midnight.The ten warriors Queen Elara insisted we bring moved like ghosts through the darkness—elite soldiers who had spent years preparing for exactly this kind of infiltration. They made our group of fifteen feel almost manageable instead of suicidal.Almost."The passage Marcus mentioned should be here," Prince Darius whispered, examining the wall with tactical precision. "Behind the third drainage grate from the corner tower.""Should be?" one of the Queen's warriors—a woman named Vera with scars that told stories—raised an eyebrow. "We are staking our lives on 'should be'?""Welcome to revolution," Marcus replied dryly, already working on the grate. "Certainty is for people with better options."The grate came loose with minimal sound. Beyond it, darkness yawned like an open mouth.Through the bond, I felt Kael's instinctive scan for threats. His enhanced senses detected nothing immediately dangerous, but something felt wrong

I could not breathe. Could not think beyond the absence where Kael had been in the bond.Gone.One of the five threads connecting us—severed completely."No," I whispered, then louder: "No. This is not—we can fix this. Rhett, help me. We can—""He is gone, Lyra." Rhett's voice was hollow, his hand on my shoulder the only thing keeping me from complete collapse. "The Void poison reached his heart. There is nothing to heal.""There is always something!" I channeled cosmic power desperately, pouring it into Kael's cooling body. Nothing happened. The power had nowhere to go, no spark of life to reignite. "I came back from death. The golden entity brought me back. We can—""The golden entity was you," Darius said quietly, grief making his voice rough. "From a timeline where you ascended to cosmic status. We do not have that power. We do not have that option."King Aldric knelt beside his son's body, hands hovering but not touching, like he had lost the right. "This is my fault. All of it.

The return to base camp felt like walking through a graveyard of possibilities.Warriors who had fought beside us hours ago now stood silent, watching our procession with expressions caught between hope and despair. They saw four princes returned alive—a miracle. They saw the imprisoned King dragged in chains—a victory. They saw our faces and understood the cost had been devastating anyway."You secured the Anchor," Lady Seraphine stated rather than asked, falling into step beside me. "I felt the magical shift when the wards locked into place. The entire region's dimensional stability increased by orders of magnitude.""We did." My voice sounded hollow even to my own ears. "Marcus and I sealed it permanently. The Void Emperor cannot use it as an entry point anymore.""So why do you look like you lost?""Because Kael died. Then came back. Because King Aldric is possessed again despite being purged. Because we have twelve hours before the Void Emperor recovers enough to launch his final