The silence of my room had become a fragile sanctuary, a thin shell of normalcy pressed against the roaring chaos of the world beyond its walls. For three days, I had remained within this gilded cage, emerging only when absolutely necessary, and always under Sir Edric's formidable escort. The hollow core where my power had lived remained cold and empty, but the absence was no longer a source of panic. It was simply a fact, like the grey sky beyond my window or the constant, low hum of activity in the corridors below.
But silence cannot be sealed. Whispers have a way of seeping through cracks, of finding the spaces between stones and the gaps beneath doors. And the whispers about me had become a flood.
