Because this did exactly what it was meant to do.
The summit is over.
Neutrality is broken.
CHAPTER 2
KAEL
The blast hits like a star collapsing inward.
There is no warning. No swell of sound. Just a violent compression of the world—air turning solid in my lungs, light detonating white across my vision. The floor vanishes. My body lifts, weightless for a fraction of a heartbeat?—
Then gravity slams back.
I hit on my side. Bone spurs along my shoulder and thigh take the impact, splintering crystal instead of flesh. Heat skims across my skin like a predator’s breath. My ears fill with a razor-thin ringing that swallows the chamber whole.
I roll before debris finishes falling.
A crystalline support beam crashes where I stood seconds ago, exploding into shards that scatter like frozen rain.
Smoke pours downward.
I inhale through it.
Burned composite. Melted insulation. Ionized air. Blood.
“Report!” My voice comes out rough but steady.
“Up,” Varek answers immediately.
“Here,” Jhor growls through coughing.
Good.
I rise.
The summit chamber is open to space on one side. The containment field flickers in unstable blue, humming like a wounded thing. Beyond it, stars spin in cold silence.
Delegates lie scattered across fractured floor—Vakutan armor dented and blackened, League robes torn, Alzhon scales dulled beneath ash.
Three of my envoys are down.
I move.
The first lies twisted near the epicenter. I crouch, pressing fingers against his throat.
Nothing.
His blood pools dark against polished obsidian.
I close his eyes with two careful claws.
The second tries to push himself upright, one leg bent wrong.
“Don’t,” I tell him.
“I can stand,” he snarls.
