Chapter 716: The Thread That Snapped
The underground chamber was cold. Torches burned low in their brackets, casting more shadow than light, their flames flickering unevenly as if the air itself were reluctant to move.
Selith stood at the center of it all, her hunched frame silhouetted against the glow of a single candle on the table before her. The room stretched around her in shadows and shelves—glass jars filled with murky liquids, bundles of dried herbs hanging from the ceiling like upside-down gardens, bone containers stacked in uneven piles.
Her focus was on the book before her.
It lay open on the table, its pages yellowed, its leather cover cracked and worn smooth in places from decades of handling. The diagrams within were still clear—circles within circles, symbols she had traced with her fingers so many times she no longer needed to look at them to know where each line belonged.
