The silence in the war room was a physical presence, thick and smothering. The shouts from the courtyard had been silenced by Ronan's enforcers, but the tension hadn't dissipated; it had been driven underground, a poison seeping into the foundations of the Keep. Kael stood with his back to the room, staring at the map. The pins marking troop placements, supply lines, enemy positions—they all felt like a child's game now. He was playing checkers on a board where someone had just introduced the concept of gunpowder.
Lyra's broadcast hadn't just been words. It had been a key, turning a lock deep inside him, and a door he hadn't known was there had swung open to reveal a bottomless pit. His father hadn't been a hero defending his people. He'd been a useful idiot, a blunt instrument wielded by the ghost of a long-dead ideology. The Draven name, the legacy he'd carried like a suit of armor, was rusted through, worthless.
