The dragon heart sat heavy in my palm.
Not crude weight—gravity had nothing to do with it. This was the heaviness of a life that had pressed against the ceiling of the world and almost broken through. I let my breath out slowly and, for a blink, the room fell away.
The Gates were there again: platinum-silver, austere, patient. They didn't glow. They didn't speak. They simply existed, the way a mountain exists—indifferent to want. The Gates of Transcendence. The seam between mid and high Radiant.
"Not yet," I told them, and they did what they always do. They waited.
I opened my eyes to Avalon's light—clean, modern, the touch of warm gold the Slatemark architects like. Vaelrith's heart still pulsed faintly in my hand. Second-strongest of their kind. Close enough to Divine that the sky must have felt thinner when he flew.
