Questions are comfortable companions compared to what comes next.
Because sometimes, the world is merciful enough to stay complicated.
And sometimes…
it answers.
When it does, people discover something far more unsettling than uncertainty:
answers can be cruel.
Not because they are wrong.
Because they are honest.
Today, the city receives answers.
And they do not behave the way anyone wishes they would.
The first answer arrives just after dawn.
It comes not as a message,
not as a threat,
not as a plea.
It comes as footsteps.
Elen hears them before she sees anything.
Soft.
Tired.
Deliberate.
A patrol approaches with a quiet urgency that wakes the courtyard into awareness before anyone raises an alarm. No weapons are drawn. No shouts are raised.
Tension without violence.
