The light of dawn was cold and diffused, seeping over the horizon like a breath held too long. Emory’s Field, still veiled in frost, shone with a quiet kind of sorrow. Nothing stirred. No wind brushed the grass, no birds sang from the sparse winter branches. The stillness wasn’t peace—it was expectancy, the breathless silence before the breaking of a tide.
Liora stood at the edge of the central rise, eyes fixed on the sky where threads of the Web once shimmered visibly. Now, those cosmic veins had dulled, retreating into silence. She could still sense them—barely—but only as memories echoing in her bones. It was like remembering a dream just after waking: incomplete, haunting, and tugging at something she could no longer touch.
Kaelen knelt nearby, one hand pressed against the frozen ear
