"OPEN THEM," he said quietly, watching her face with the intensity of a man whose entire future hung in the balance.
After Grayson spoke, silence settled over them—not the gentle kind, but the kind that pulled tight and held its breath, steeped in the echoes of what had been revealed and the threat of what had yet to break free.
Mailah's grip on the black envelopes faltered, their surface devouring the day's last golden glow until nothing but shadow remained.
The paper felt wrong beneath her fingertips—not quite hot, not quite cold, but something that made her skin crawl.
It was as if the envelopes themselves were alive, pulsing with a malevolent energy.
"How long have you been receiving these?" she asked, as she turned the first envelope over in her hands.
"Decades," Grayson replied, his voice carrying a flatness that spoke of resigned acceptance. "The first one arrived two centuries after our exile. They kept coming after that, always with the same black paper."
