Athena felt the war shift before she could name it.
Cities once welcoming grew cautious. Messengers stopped arriving. Resistance cells went silent. The war was learning her shape.
In a ruined monastery overlooking a frost-bitten valley, she slept long enough to dream.
He stood beside her as he had by the river—no uniform, no wounds, only a sadness too deep for anger.
"You don't have to keep searching," he told her gently.
She woke with tears on her cheeks and dried blood on her hands.
Still, she rose.