That night, the castle changed.
Not in structure, nor in form, but in atmosphere. The walls seemed to breathe with something older than stone, and the air grew heavy with a pressure that pressed against thought itself.
Elira awoke to pain.
Not her own alone.
It was sharper this time, threaded with emotion she did not recognise at first. Anger. Exhaustion. Something dangerously close to grief.
She rose without hesitation and followed it.
It led her to the lower halls.
Kael stood alone within a vast chamber, one hand pressed against a pillar of fractured obsidian. His head was lowered, his breathing controlled, but the magic around him was unstable, flickering like dying embers.
"Elira," he said without turning.
"You can feel it too," she replied.
A faint laugh escaped him, though there was nothing amused in it. "I would prefer not to."
The bond between them tightened, forcing a shared awareness of pain that was not physical.
Then—
The world shifted.
Elira saw it.
Flames across a city that no longer existed. Screams swallowed by collapsing towers. A young version of Kael standing still amid destruction, eyes empty as the world broke around him.
She staggered back.
Kael turned sharply.
"Do not look at me like that," he said.
But it was already too late.
She had seen enough to understand that nothing about him had ever been simple.