Chapter 178

Maren

I wake up because the world feels… tilted.

Not spinning. Not wrong. Just shifted enough that my body notices before my mind catches up. The warmth around me is gone—Kaelen’s steady heat no longer curled at my back—and the absence is loud in a way that makes my chest ache.

I don’t open my eyes right away.

I listen.

Stone hums faintly beneath the floor, dragon realm never fully quiet. There ar