Chapter Text
(journal entry, penned in Illidan’s hand)
Lytavis slept before I finished the first circle of the ointment.
It still astonishes me how swiftly exhaustion claims her now—how deeply she falls when she is finally comfortable. As though the moment pain loosens its hold, her body remembers what rest feels like and surrenders to it without hesitation.
She is warm against me.
Always warm.
I should sleep.
I cannot.
Her question at dinner sits in me like a stone that refuses to sink.
I had felt the strangeness in the leylines—subtle shifts, minor distortions, currents running too fast or too thin. Enough to notice, not enough to name. They ripple against my own magic, and Jace’s, and Lucien’s. Sometimes the resonance flickers through me long after she has left the room, like an echo with nowhere to settle.
But hearing Malfurion speak of the winds turning restless…
That is not something I can easily dismiss.
He is irritating beyond measure, yes—self-important, sun-touched, endlessly enamored with his own voice.
But he is no fool, and nature does not lie to him.
If something is amiss with the land, then something is coming.
Lytavis laughed when she told me.
I did not.
She is seven months along.
If danger rises—and I feel in my bones that it will—how do I shield her?
How do I shield them?
Lucien suspects more than he says. I know that look. The measured calm that hides a dozen calculations. He will speak to the other Magisters tomorrow. I will not let this rest until I have answers.
For now, I hold her.
Her breathing is steady, soft, a rhythm the world itself should bow to.
If there is imbalance in the leylines, let it fear her.
If there is corruption stirring, let it break on me long before it touches her.
She murmured once in her sleep—my name, I think. Or something close to it.
I answered before I even realized I had spoken.
There is nothing I would not do to keep her safe.
And yet… tonight, for the first time, I felt the faintest thread of helplessness whisper beneath all my resolve.
Something is shifting in our world.
And I fear it is only the beginning.