Chapter 65 - The Broken Circle

Kai and Varaan didn't speak for a long time. The cold wind screamed across the mountaintop, its shrill voice weaving through the jagged stones like a restless spirit, carrying with it flecks of stinging ice and the faint, metallic scent of ozone. But neither of them stirred. They stood as still as the frozen rocks beneath their feet, their bodies rigid, not from the wind's bite but from the invisible, crushing weight of what they had seen. The silence between them was not born of mutual understanding or the quiet bond of warriors—it was the heavy, oppressive stillness of minds trying to grasp the ungraspable, of souls still echoing with the memory of something that should not exist.