Chapter 97

*Elora*

It started with a flicker. A breath I didn’t take, lodged somewhere behind my ribs. A thought I hadn’t formed, blooming like frost on the inside of my skull. Not loud. Not violent. Just wrong. Like something had reached through the walls of my mind and left fingerprints behind.

The first time it happened, I was meditating in the lower chamber, the one Kezar insisted I visit daily now. The