The Oakhaven Temple was no longer a ruin; it was a cauldron of competing realities, a place where the air itself felt brittle, ready to shatter under the weight of the magic bleeding into the atmosphere.
Kaelen stood amidst the fractured stone, his silhouette elongated by the abyssal, pulsating light of the Casket of the Elders. He was no longer a soldier of the Council; he was a self-appointed god, his shadow-wraiths twisting around him like hungry, starving hounds, feeding on the very oxygen in the room.
Gwen was still chained to the pillar, but the darkness Kaelen had unleashed was failing. The Dark Solar power within her—the volatile, beautiful, and devastating rage she had been suppressing for a lifetime—was beginning to seep out, cracking the violet chains like eggshells under the pressure of a rising tide.
