Chapter 111: The Song-Cutter
The squall was a blessing of noise and chaos. It whipped the sea into a fury of whitecaps and driving rain, cloaking their tiny skiff in a grey shroud. Kaelen fought the tiller, muscles corded, reading the waves by feel more than sight. Elara huddled in the bow, Aurora wrapped in oilskins against her chest, the child's magic a faint, determined ember against the howling dark. Lyra crouched amidships, bailing with a wooden bowl, her eyes sharp on the resonator crystal secured in a niche its pulse a steady, unwavering beacon pointing like a finger into the heart of the storm.
For hours, they were playthings of the elements. The world shrank to the groaning of wood, the hiss of rain, the taste of salt. The political threats, the intelligent ghosts, the weight of their abandoned home all were scoured away by the primal immediacy of survival. There was only the next wave, the next gust, the next pull on the sheet.
