CROWNED BY BLOOD
He hesitated, "Yes. I feel it. We all do. But I cannot explain it, cannot identify its source, cannot even properly describe what we're sensing."
That night, after dismissing the exhausted mages with instructions to continue research through ancient texts, I couldn't even pretend to sleep. I paced my chamber restlessly, bare feet silent on cold stone, checking obsessively on each child every few minutes like a nervous new mother with her first infant.
Kai Jr. didn't stir when I entered his room, his breathing perfectly even and steady, but his eyelids fluttered rapidly in what should have been REM sleep except, I noticed with growing horror, he wasn't actually dreaming. I could sense that n