[POV: Kai Veylor]
The war chamber no longer whispered.
It screamed.
Stone walls that once hummed with warm runes now howled with every lie ever fed to him. Faces flickered in the sconces—Seris, smiling with blood on her hands. Rhys, vanishing into memory. Astra, forever dancing at the edge of loyalty and lunacy.
And Liora.
Her betrayal was the freshest wound. Her kiss, the last lie that burned.
Kai stood alone before the altar, its cracked marble surface pulsing with blood-red light. The prophecy scroll trembled in his hand like it feared him. Maybe it should.
"You knew," he whispered to himself. "From the beginning."
His voice echoed, twisted by magic, distorted by memory.
His name glowed on the prophecy in a language older than the empire. Not silver. Not gold.
Crimson.
Condemned.
A faint sound broke through the quiet—a tongue click, playful and dangerous.
"Still breaking things you can't fix, I see."
