Location: Radiant Realm, Sharlin's Hotel Suite → Temple of Light | Radiant Realm
Time: 28 Frostforge, 9938 AZI (Evening) | Day 489/187
Realm: Upper Realm (Radiant)
Sharlin's hands shook as she poured her third glass of wine.
The hotel suite was luxurious—silk curtains, marble floors, furniture carved from rare woods that cost more than most cultivators earned in a lifetime. Everything perfect. Everything elegant. Everything screaming wealth and power, and status.
It didn't help.
Nothing helped.
She could still feel those black eyes boring into her soul. Could still hear that terrible, gentle voice promising extermination. Could still see the shadows rippling beneath jade-white skin, darkness barely caged, death held back by the thinnest thread of control.
Ren had meant it.
Every. Single. Word.
