Morning lingered in the cabin long after Elara finished speaking.
Silence followed her words.
Not the comfortable kind.
Not the kind that softened a moment.
This silence pressed in—heavy, unmoving.
Vaelith did not speak.
He did not shift.
He simply stared at her.
Every word she had said… he had lived.
For five years.
The same dreams.
The same places.
The same haunting fragments that had followed him through sleep and waking alike.
His thoughts raced, colliding, refusing to settle.
Elara shifted beneath his gaze.
The weight of it unsettled her.
Slowly, she lowered her eyes, her voice quiet.
“Did I say something wrong?”
The question broke through the storm in his mind.
Vaelith exhaled softly, as if remembering where he was.
“You did nothing wrong,” he said gently.
But he
