Twenty years passed without a whisper from the Deepening.
Ember's Rest had become a city of fifty thousand souls—walls of white stone, towers that caught the sun, streets where children played without fear. The Deep Ones who had chosen hope were elders now, their silver skin faded to grey, their eyes warm.
Kaela walked through the market, her grey hair hidden beneath a hood. People nodded to her as she passed. Some still remembered when she had faced the Deepening alone. Most just knew her as the void-touched, the keeper of the golden light.
The Deepening is quiet, the void said.
"Too quiet."
You do not trust silence?
"I trust nothing that waits."
---
Elara sat on the porch of the farmhouse, watching the sunset.
She was eighty-two now, her body frail, her mind sharp. The void had
