Broken Vows

The lightning staircase vanished behind them like a severed umbilical cord—an abrupt and irreversible departure from everything that had come before. There was no farewell. No echo. Just the silence of something ancient sealing itself shut, the final hiss of divine power withdrawing into mist. Selena didn't look back. None of them did. There was nothing left behind them but the bones of judgment and the ash of what had been sacrificed. Ahead lay the unknown—but not the kind that stirred hope or discovery. This was the unknown of reckoning. Of consequence. Of truths long buried clawing their way to the surface.