The silence that followed Caleb's collapse was thick—suffocating. Aria knelt beside him, her fingers trembling as she reached for his face. His skin was cold, his breaths shallow, and a thin sheen of sweat glistened on his brow. She could still feel the echo of his last words in her bones:
"She knows you're watching."
But who? Who was watching through him? And why now?
Aria gritted her teeth and pressed her palm to his chest, reaching inward with her spirit. The bond that had always felt like a lifeline now responded like a severed thread—buzzing with static, distant, unreachable. She shuddered. Something was wrong. Deeply, cosmically wrong.
Footsteps thundered into the chamber. Rowan skidded to a halt, his eyes instantly scanning the scene. "Aria, what the hell happened?"
Solene arrived just behind him, her robes fluttering, her gaze sharp. "We felt a rupture—something in the veil was torn."
