Time moved differently now—not as a foe to be outrun, but as a gentle companion walking beside us, marking the seasons with blossoms and harvests, with laughter and growing children, with the slow, sweet turning of days into years. The scars of the past did not vanish—they simply softened, becoming not chains that bound us, but stars by which we steered. We had walked through the fire; we knew its heat. And because we knew it, we learned how to keep others from being burned.
One bright spring morning, five years after the light returned, the great hall was filled not with warriors or councilors, but with children. They sat cross-legged upon woven mats, their eyes wide and bright, their small hands resting upon their knees. I sat among them, wearing simple robes of soft white wool, the sil
