The woods breathed with a rhythm that had no mechanical syncopation. Elara did not look back at the amber flicker of the village; she knew that the machine was already consuming their attention, their labor, and eventually, their autonomy. She felt a strange, hollow lightness in her chest, not the relief of a job finished, but the finality of a chapter turned. She was a ghost walking through a world that was rapidly learning to build its own ghosts.
Kael followed her, his boots crunching softly on the carpet of pine needles. He didn't ask where they were going. He had seen the look on her face when she severed the link with the village leader. It was the look of a woman who had finally surrendered the world to its own gravity.
They are going to burn, Kael said after miles of silence. Whe
