Night returned to the Southern Plains like a ghost reluctant to rest. The sky hung low, heavy with smoke and half-born storms, the stars veiled behind drifting embers that refused to die. Every breath carried the metallic taste of aftermath — of things that burned too long, too fiercely, and left the world unsure if it had survived or simply changed shape.
Ryon had not slept.
He stood alone atop the ridge overlooking what had once been the Hollow Pass. The battlefield below had turned to black glass in places, warped from the intensity of his last summoning. The wind scraped over it with a hiss, whispering of the thousands who had perished there. Yet even among the ruins, he could feel it — a pulse beneath the silence, faint but deliberate. Not the echo of death, but of something older. Something watching.
