The silence that followed the solidification of the Sanguine Spire was not a peaceful thing. It was a suffocating, heavy pressure, the kind of silence that precedes a landslide or the breaking of a heart. I remained on my knees at the center of the plaza, my palms still pressed against the stone. The white marble of the Border-Spire was gone, replaced by a deep, translucent red stone that pulsed with a faint, rhythmic amber light. It was no longer a monument to Southern arrogance; it was a physical manifestation of my blood, a cathedral of bone and ruby reaching toward a sky that still wept with the grey dust of Selene's departure.
Every muscle in my body felt as if it had been shredded and rewoven with white-hot wire. The red-gold scales on my arms were glowing so intensely they cast flickering shadows against the ground, and the crimson lines etched into my face burned with a feverish heat. I had held the weight of a mountain, and the cost was carved into my very marrow.
