Ariane:
Some deaths do not pass quietly—Some demand to be witnessed, to be felt, like an echo through the bones of the living, and even as I watched Seris and the others, it was those echoes I felt.
Rook still drew breath, still lived, and by all logic, that should have anchored me.
But I was unraveling—thread by thread, grief tugging me apart, as if my skin were stretched too thin over a heart that could no longer contain so much loss. There were too many broken bodies, too many who would never rise again.
That, the knowledge of their sacrifice, is what anchored me in this moment. It was not relief or joy that, for the moment, the rift stood firm and the monsters behind it would sleep; it was not that Rook would live to fight another day, to love another moment, it was the death and t
