Chapter 231

*Elora*

The wind cut sharper here.

It wasn’t the clean mountain air of the Aethel-Bulwark, or the damp, heavy drafts from the Void-Reach. It was a bitter wind, threaded with ash and memory, the kind that scraped your lungs raw as though it wanted you to remember what had burned.

We stood before what was left of the Academy.

The walls had collapsed long ago, melted stone hardened into jagged peaks