The air inside the estate is unusually tense, especially when the king of the kingdom is currently at the estate. None of the workers can truly be at ease, knowing that their king is in the sorceress's estate. Footsteps echoed briskly down the polished corridor, hurried yet controlled. It's Caelum Vensel, the estate's head physician, summoned with urgency by Sophia.
He carried no panic in his stride, only purpose, the kind born from years of experience, from having tended to wounds of both flesh and soul. Since the earliest days when Lady Olivia first arrived at Azure Valley, Caelum had faithfully overseen the health of the house's mistresses and the master.
He had watched this household shift and evolve, watched its foundation grow stronger and stranger in quiet ways. Most of all, he had noticed the change in the air ever since Sienna-Rose returned from her long coma the year before. Something had awakened in the land. Something different, otherworldly.
