The morning air is cool enough to make the stone patio uncomfortable in that grounding way I have started to appreciate, and I sit with my feet tucked under me and a mug warming my hands while the packhouse slowly wakes behind me. Birds move through the trees along the perimeter, guards change shifts with quiet efficiency, and the faint sounds of doors opening and closing drift out through the windows, the whole place easing into motion like a body stretching after restless sleep. For a few rare minutes everything feels almost normal, like the world might let us breathe before it demands something else.
I know better than to trust that feeling.
The shift comes before the sound does, a subtle tightening that runs through the pack like a held breath, and I lift my head slowly instead of ju
