Chapter 101

Chapter 101 Five Years Later Kaelos's POV The memorial stood on the hill overlooking Blackthorne, carved from white stone that seemed to glow in the moonlight. Not a monument to death, but to transformation—to a woman who had loved the world enough to become its eternal guardian. Fresh flowers lay at its base, left by people who still remembered the Luna who had walked among them as mortal flesh and blood. I placed my own offering—a single red rose from the garden she had tended as a girl—and stepped back to read the inscription for the thousandth time: *Here stood Seraphina of Blackthorne, Luna of the Realm, Keeper of the Eternal Flame. She chose to burn so that others might live in light.* "You still come here every month," Callista said softly, emerging from the shadows of the memorial garden. Her hair was shorter now, streaked with premature silver, and she walked with a slight limp from a wound that had never quite healed. But her eyes still held the sharp intelligence that had ma