The Price That Balance Demands
The world did not end at dawn.
That was the cruel part.
Light crept back into the basin as if nothing irreversible had happened. Birds returned to the trees. The forest breathed again. Council sigils lay shattered and inert across the land, their authority broken but not erased.
Only my body refused to follow the morning.
I woke on stone.
Cold beneath my back. Ash on my palms. Lucien's presence was the first thing I registered, solid and unwavering beside me. His hand was clenched around mine as if he had been holding me together by force of will alone.
"Aurelia," he said quietly.
I tried to answer.
No sound came out.
Pain followed instead, sharp and disorienting, radiating outward from my chest as if something inside me had been torn loose and stitched back incorrectly.
Lucien stiffened. "Do not move."
Cassian knelt on my other side, his expression stripped of its usual calm. "The recall cut deeper than expected."
"How deep," I whispered.
