Chapter 151: The Weight of Silence
The cove, when they finally stumbled into it, was a portrait of tense normalcy. The physical scars of the corruption-seed were gone, but the people moved with a careful, deliberate quiet, as if loud noises might shatter something newly mended. That fragile peace was obliterated by the sight of the returning column.
They came not as victors, but as survivors, shrouded in dust and dried blood. They carried their dead on makeshift stretchers. And at the center, Kaelen carried Elara, wrapped in a cloak, her face as pale as sea-bleached bone.
A silence deeper than any Alarian magic fell over the docks. Then, a single, shattered cry from the orphanage garden as one of the children saw, and the cove broke into frantic, fearful motion. Tessa took charge, her healer's mind overriding her friend's grief, directing them to the cottage. Bren's face, already etched with years, seemed to age another decade as he saw his daughter.
