The calm doesn’t arrive all at once, and I don’t trust it when it does, because it settles the way fog does after a storm, creeping in low and quiet and pretending it hasn’t just erased something violent from view. The alarms wind down in stages rather than stopping outright, tones shifting from urgent to cautious to standby, and the packhouse follows suit, movement slowing, voices lowering, shoulders easing by degrees instead of collapsing all at once.
Mara is gone.
Not escorted. Not restrained. Simply gone, like the intruder she aligned herself with took her when it withdrew, folding her absence into the same space it left behind, and that lack feels louder than any confrontation ever could. The corridor where it happened looks unchanged at a glance, stone walls intact, lights steady a
