Chapter 103: The Composite Ghost
The understanding that they were weaving a web with every mended tear changed everything. The cove was no longer just a sanctuary; it was the eye of a quiet hurricane of their own making. They moved through the next days with a new, grim purpose, analyzing their own past actions as if they were an enemy's campaign.
Elara and Lyra spent hours with the map, not just marking locations, but drawing lines of resonance thick for strong interventions like Frosthold and the Stillness valley, thinner for Anchor and the bog. They theorized connections, predicted interference patterns. Kaelen and Bren doubled the physical patrols, but now they also watched for non-physical anomalies: patches of air that seemed to shimmer with misplaced memory, spots where sound behaved oddly.
It was Aurora who found the first bloom of the feedback. Not by searching, but because it called to her.
