Morning came slow and grey.
Not the soft kind that crept in with birdsong and pale gold light—but the heavy, overcast kind that settled into bones and refused to lift. Smoke still drifted from the basin behind them, the air carrying the sharp scent of crushed stone and wet ash. The ruin lay quiet now, its violence spent, as if the land itself had exhausted whatever fury it had been holding.
Elara sat on a flat slab of rock at the edge of the clearing, knees drawn up, arms wrapped tightly around herself.
She was shaking.
Not visibly—not enough that anyone else would notice—but inside, everything trembled. The bond had steadied, yes, but it had not returned to what it had been before. It couldn’t. Threads still hummed faintly through her chest and spine, stretched thinner now, wider, lik
