Elara was twelve when she finally understood what healing meant.
It didn't mean forgetting. Didn't mean moving on. Didn't mean the scars disappeared or the fear went away or the nights stopped being long and cold and full of ghosts. It meant something else. Something she'd been learning slowly, painfully, one day at a time. A lesson that couldn't be rushed, couldn't be forced, could only be lived.
It meant learning to live with the wound instead of being defined by it.
She was helping in the infirmary now. The younger children came to her when they were scared, when they had nightmares, when the weight of what they'd been through threatened to crush them under its own gravity. She knew their names. Knew their stories. Knew the specific shade of fear that lived in each of their eyes — th
