Aurora's POV
The fire burned long after the screams stopped.
I sat on the forest floor, knees pulled to my chest, staring into the scorched earth where she had vanished. Smoke hung low in the air, thick and bitter, clinging to my lungs no matter how shallow my breaths became. Every inhale tasted like failure.
She was gone.
Taken.
The word echoed hollowly in my mind, refusing to settle into something I could understand. It bounced around inside my skull, sharp-edged and unforgiving, cutting deeper each time it repeated. Taken. Not killed. Not defeated. Taken, as if she were a prize, a tool, something to be claimed and taken advantage of.
Around me, the pack moved in quiet urgency, healers kneeling beside the wounded, warriors dragging bodies from the edge of the clearing, Celeste standing rigid near the boundary stones, her staff planted deep in the earth as if holding the mountain itself in place.
But none of it felt real. Not yet.
