Chapter 53: Ten Thousand Years of Solitude, A Return for One

The weight of Caspian's final words hung in the grand study like a shroud. “We have merely, finally, opened our eyes to it.” Silence descended, thick and suffocating. Melissa, her face ashen, leaned heavily against Selina, her knuckles white where she gripped her friend’s arm. The truth of the “virus,” of Corvaina’s machinations, was already more than she could process. Now, this talk of an ongoing war felt like the prelude to a nightmare from which she couldn’t wake. Alexander...