The quiet hum of birds outside the cottage window marked the start of a peaceful morning. Kagami sat cross-legged on a cushion in the living room, wrapped in a thick bnket. The scent of broth and herbs wafted in from the kitchen where Mikay was preparing breakfast. Zack sat nearby, sharpening his twin sabers out of habit, his eyes occasionally drifting toward Kagami, checking on him without saying much.

  Despite the warmth of home, Kagami’s thoughts kept drifting to Elias.

  His mind repyed the moment over and over—the cw piercing Elias’s side, the blood, the sudden fall. Kagami had acted on instinct, and power long buried had awakened, but at what cost?

  "Still no message from the academy?" Kagami finally asked, his voice soft.

  Zack shook his head. "Only what we heard yesterday—Elias's condition has stabilized. He’s recovering, and his mother is with him."

  Kagami nodded faintly, not saying anything else. Relief was there, but it felt buried beneath yers of guilt and exhaustion.

  Mikay brought in a bowl of steaming ramen and crouched beside him with a warm smile. “I made it just like you taught me. Come on, you need to eat. You're no good to Elias or anyone if you pass out again.”

  He took the bowl, murmured a quiet thank you, and slowly began eating. The familiar taste helped ground him.

  Meanwhile, far across the nd, in a cavern lit by violet crystals and cloaked in void shadows, a different gathering took pce.

  The Triad of the Shattered Veil—what remained of them—stood in a darkened chamber of whispers and swirling abyss magic. Only four figures were present now. Fenric and Shei had been captured. And their absence echoed like a wound in the silence.

  Then came a pulse—cold, ancient, and final.

  From a portal of twisting shadows stepped a figure—tall, draped in robes both celestial and infernal, his face veiled by a single crown of floating obsidian thorns. One silver eye glowed with tragic divinity, the other, a demonic crimson-bck vortex of madness.

  Azraval Nihilex.

  The leader of the Triad.

  “Two have fallen,” he said calmly, his voice echoing like forgotten hymns across a ruined cathedral. “Yet the thread still holds. This world teeters near its reckoning.”

  Gorrum Bckhide cracked his stone knuckles, eyes burning with anger. “We should storm the academy and free them.”

  “Recklessness won’t unmake the veil,” replied Syltharis Nighthollow smoothly, his illusion-cloaked form barely visible in the darkness.

  Azraval raised one hand, silencing all. “We do not act yet. We gather. We awaken the void-locked. And when the stars vanish from their skies… then we strike.”

  In the cottage, Kagami stirred restlessly in his sleep, haunted not by dreams—but by omens yet to come.

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