CHAPTER 41: THE INHERITED KEY
Three days after the great gathering at the old oak, the valley had settled into a rhythm it hadn’t known in a generation. Gates stood open day and night; riders came and went not as messengers of fear, but as bearers of news and invitations; families who had hidden behind locked doors for years walked the roads together, trading stories and tools and grain. Yet even as peace took root, we all felt it — the quiet pull of something unfinished, a shadow that had not been fully banished, only stunned.
We were sorting through the last crates of recovered records in the main hall, spreading maps and deeds across the long oak table, when Rian pulled a small, dented tin box from the back of a crate marke
