The silence after the light was not peaceful.
It was suffocating.
Ash swirled in the air like forgotten prayers. The ground beneath Cambria's feet was cracked glass, each step she took echoing with the memory of a world undone. The shattered throne room of the Hollow Crown felt like a tomb now empty, breathless, waiting.
And then the throne pulsed.
Once a symbol of dominion, now it bled with black flame Knox's twisted legacy. Its stone surface cracked and hissed, veins of burning crimson coursing like blood under the skin. It pulsed not with magic, but with memory. With pain.
Cambria stood still, Evelyn at her side, their silhouettes cast against fractured stained glass. The once-regal windows, now shattered, let in an ominous twilight. Maddox lingered just behind them bruised, bloodied, blade in hand, his breaths heavy with exhaustion.
"He's gone," Evelyn said, voice flat, as though needing it to be true. "That light devoured everything. There's no way he survived that."
