The morning light hit the ocean with a ferocity that seemed to purge the very memory of the dark. Elara watched the waves, each one crashing against the basalt cliffs with a rhythmic, indifferent pulse. She was finally standing at the edge of the world, where the land gave way to an infinite expanse of salt and spray. There was no registry to dismantle here, no machine to break, and no void waiting to spill through a fracture in the sky.
She realized then that her hands were empty. For years, they had been filled with the weight of artifacts, the cold bite of iron blades, and the suffocating pressure of cosmic duty. Now, she felt the raw, uncomfortable texture of the wind against her skin, and the ache in her bones that was not from a curse, but from the simple, grinding exhaustion of a b
