55.Truce of Embers

The sea had quieted by morning, but the estate was a ruin of echoes and unanswered questions. Smoke still curled from a scorched section of the east wing, where Kael had vanished into darkness after triggering the power collapse. Emergency lighting flickered, the estate's once-grand systems running on backup cores. Silence had settled again, but it wasn't peace. It was the breath held between battles.

In the aftermath, they had split into silence.

Elara found herself back in the sitting room, now stripped of elegance, glass cracked from plasma bursts, soot clinging to drapes. She sat on the edge of the chaise, her eyes on the blood-dark stain left where Nova had taken a grazing hit to the arm. Nova had insisted she was fine.

Valen stood across the room, arms folded, watching the sea through the cracked windows. Aeron had disappeared sometime before dawn, saying he needed air. No one stopped him.