The first thing the world learns after choosing not to save everyone is that grief doesn’t behave like weather.
It doesn’t “pass.”
It settles.
It soaks into wood and stone. It clings to clothing. It turns laughter into a sound people make carefully, like stepping across ice that might not hold.
The Unplaced City still wakes the next morning. Lanterns still flicker. Markets still open. Wolves still run the outer ring at dawn, paws whispering over frost-slick paths.
But the air tastes different now.
Salt.
Not from the river.
From tears dried on lips, swallowed back too often.
Kael stands on the high walk above the central square, watching the city move like it’s trying not to wake something sleeping beneath it. His shoulders are squared, his face composed, but the tension in him has
