Days had passed since Kael’s warning — days filled with tension that never quite became danger. The Herion pack had fallen into a strange rhythm of watchfulness and silence, as if the entire land were holding its breath.
The warriors patrolled the borders.
The villagers carried on with their daily lives, pretending not to notice the heavier air.
And I… I was waiting for the world to break open.
But it never did.
No threat came.
No messenger arrived bearing ill news.
No foreign scent lingered on the wind.
Everything remained peaceful.
And somehow, that peace was worse.
Because beneath it, something in me refused to rest or believe it. The knowledge I had gathered from the library still haunted me — the way the old pages spoke of anchors and binding, of the spaces between life an
