The silence left by Veynn Cael Ashborne's last words in Chapter 54 still hung in the air like a noose. Raen didn't move. Couldn't. The moon above the ruins of Ashveil seemed paler than it had ever been, and beneath it, the ground still pulsed with the aftershock of his decision.
He had named the beast. He had burned the seal.
And now something ancient stirred beneath the skin of reality.
The wind shifted. Cold. Tasting of metal and old breath. Raen's hand tightened around his blade as the glow of his Shattermark dimmed, flickered, then reignited with a whisper like cracking bone. Behind him, the new ally—Sioren, the Ash-Blooded Prince—stepped forward, his eyes wide with horror. "You should not have done that."
"Too late."
The air trembled.
Where once the earth had been scorched with blackened symbols, a fissure now split it open. From it crawled something wrong. Not monstrous, but forgotten.
A man stepped through. No, not a man.
