POV: KAEL
We gathered in the war room within the hour—what was left of the leadership that hadn't been killed or traumatized into uselessness by recent events. Elara, Seraphine, Theron, Lyra, and now Morgana, standing awkwardly at the edge like she wasn't sure she belonged.
She didn't. But we needed what she knew.
"Start from the beginning," I said, spreading Morgana's map across the table. "Everything you know about the Sundering Stone."
Morgana stepped forward, her movements precise, economical. A lifetime of training evident in how she occupied space.
"It's an artifact from the original Firstborn era," she began. "Before the split. Before dragons and humans existed as separate species. The device that created the division in the first place."
I'd heard legends. Fragments of stories from my earliest years, before I'd learned to dismiss them as mythology. The idea that dragons and humans had once been a single species—powerful, unified, and ultimately too dangerous to exist.
