The ritual was over, but the chain's warmth still burned against my hip like a brand I couldn't scrape off, and the world had just started watching.Dawn gold bled across the ridge, cold and thin as watered blood. My nose remained clogged with the last of the silver-mercury ash, every breath a jagged scraping of soot against raw tissue. The chain—1.5 meters of quartz and soul—throbbed once: slow, steady, the only thing left of Kael that still answered when I pressed my palm to it.No words. Just warmth.Expensive, agonizing warmth that reminded me I had welded three lives into one circuit and now couldn't find the torch to cut them free.Leo’s small fist stayed buried in the front of my obsidian blazer. His knuckles were bone-white, the fabric twisted so tight I felt the threads pop, one by one. His body trembled against mine—fragile, four years old, still smelling of ozone and the charred, metallic bone-dust of the heart chamber.His sapphire eyes, flecked with a permanent, unsettling
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