61: THE SILENCE BETWEEN STORMS

AYLA – POV

The valley had never been this quiet.

Even during the first frost, when the rivers iced and the breath of wolves rose in clouds of mourning. Not even when the burial songs were sung low into the snow, and mothers laid their young beneath moon-etched stones. No. This silence was different.

It was the kind of silence that came after something ancient cracked open and refused to die.

I stood in the center of the scorched circle where the emissaries had knelt, where their runes had failed to bind me. The stones still smoked at the edges, some blackened and split down their sacred markings. The oldest Seer, the one they called Vasht, had dropped his staff when the First Luna's power bloomed through me like wildfire. He hadn't spoken since. He'd only stared.