Chapter 29 After I Ashes

• The palace was quieter now. The kind of silence that came not from emptiness, but from breath—like the world had finally exhaled. Light streamed in through the broken ceiling, catching on the dust that hung in the air like snow that had lost its way. Kael stood at the edge of the ruined throne, hand still wrapped around the hilt of his sword, though it no longer burned. For the first time in his life, it didn’t need to.
• Elira sat on the steps below, her knees drawn close, eyes cast toward the sky. She hadn’t spoken since the chamber collapsed. Not because there was nothing to say—but because there was too much. The kind of too much that couldn’t be pressed into words, only carried in the silence between heartbeats.
• They didn’t touch—but the space between them thrummed with something new. Not uncertainty, not distance. Just quiet understanding. The kind that grew after surviving something unspeakable.