Elira

The sound splits the night like shattering glass, a violent, splintering crack that reverberates through the mountains. Silver light fractures across the invisible dome above our territory, spiderwebbing in jagged lines before imploding inward.

Pain detonates inside my chest.

It feels like someone has driven a blade straight through my sternum and twisted.

I collapse to my hind legs in the magic-dusted clearing, claws digging into frozen earth as the backlash tears through me. The barrier was never just a spell. It was alive. It was tethered to my pulse.

And now it is being ripped apart.

But none of that compares to the feeling of being duped.

Tirianna...