The Sanguine Range stood as a jagged, translucent monument to a sacrifice the world was not yet ready to name. Under the pale, recovering sun, the five-hundred-foot wall of salt that had threatened to erase the North was now a sprawling labyrinth of ruby-colored glass. It caught the light and fractured it into a billion crimson needles that danced across the tundra, turning the once-grey wasteland into a cathedral of shimmering fire.
Inside the Obsidian Fortress, the air had changed. It was no longer thin or cold. It vibrated with a low-frequency hum, a rhythmic, tectonic thrumming that felt like a heartbeat heard through miles of granite. Every stone in the walls, every flagstone in the courtyard, and every shard of obsidian in the peaks was alive with it.
Elara was not dead, but she was no longer among the living.
