Cierra:
The glass didn’t shatter all at once. It cracked slowly — delicate fractures crawling outward like veins of lightning. I drew back, heart hammering, but the sound kept going, spreading across the walls, down the stone columns, through the bones of the keep itself.
The wards screamed.
It wasn’t sound in the ordinary sense — not heard but felt. The air thickened, vibrating against my skin, a pulse that made my teeth ache.
Every torch along the corridor flared blue and then extinguished at once, plunging everything into flickering darkness.
“Dominic!” I gasped through the bond.
I felt him before I heard him — his energy spiking sharp and controlled.
Stay where you are, his voice pressed against my mind, taut with command. The wards are under attack.
But I couldn’t stay still
