The chants had not died with the dawn.
They lingered.
Whispers in the soot.
Murmurs crawling like embers across blackened earth.
Every breath Aria drew pulled the words deeper into her lungs, Ash Queen, Ash Queen until she felt her ribs might break from them.
The fire inside her slept.
But the crown remained.
Invisible to touch, yet crushing on her skull, searing lines across her brow. When she brushed at her hair, her fingertips came away raw, as though the smoke itself had branded her flesh.
Kael's chest rose shallow under her hand. His burns glowed faintly still, pulsing in time with her veins. She clung to that fragile rhythm like a lifeline.
"Don't let it have you," he had whispered.
And yet every voice in the clearing cried the opposite.
The survivors did not unite at dawn. They broke.
