We posted warriors along the river within a day, a careful rotation of Ashgrave's most trusted fighters covering the stretch of water that ran closest to the spot I'd finally been able to identify, after some hesitant, careful searching, as the place I'd actually woken up two and a half years earlier.
It felt strange, walking that bank again. Strange in a way I hadn't fully prepared for, even after everything else this past year had already asked me to carry.
The water looked different in daylight than it had in the frantic, moonlit chaos of that first night, calmer, almost ordinary, the kind of river a child might wade into on a summer afternoon without a second thought.
It was hard to reconcile that ordinary quiet with the memory of clawing my way onto its bank gasping in a stranger
