I’ve stood on tribunal steps while a city screamed for blood.
I’ve watched oathfire crawl up marble pillars, fed by a crowd’s certainty that the law is holy just because it’s loud. I’ve signed enforcement orders that turned riots into funerals and slept afterward because someone had to.
None of that compares to standing outside a canvas-and-iron door in a moving caravan and waiting for Aris Vale to wake up.
The Waystation is quiet in the wrong way.
Not peaceful. Not safe. Quiet like a held breath.
The corridor outside her berth is narrow—wood planks, brass lanterns, a stitched runner rug that smells like smoke-cedar and old spells. The whole caravan sways subtly with the night road, wheels eating distance while we pretend distance is armor.
It isn’t.
Behind the door, the healer murm
