The East Wing master suite was a furnace of suppressed chaos. Northern winds howled against the reinforced glass, rattling the panes like skeletal fingers, but inside, the air was thick, heavy with the acrid scent of spent sulfur, metallic blood, and a heat that felt alive, as if the walls themselves had been drawn into Ash Valley’s inferno.Phoenix stood by the edge of the king-sized bed, gloved hands trembling as she lifted the first Moonstone fragment from the lead-lined rucksack. The shard was jagged, obsidian-colored, and yet its core pulsed with a steady, ethereal blue light—a heartbeat that belonged to an ancient, unknowable god.Leo sat cross-legged on the silk duvet, pale-faced, his sapphire eyes now flecked with permanent gold. He stared at the shard with awe and a hunger that didn’t fully make sense to him yet.“It’s… calling me, Mommy,” Leo whispered, voice vibrating with a subtle, subsonic hum that made the air itself seem to vibrate. “It sounds like… thunder.”“Don’t tou
Read more