>>Third Person POV
Zola didn't cry. She didn't move. She just stared at him, still and alert, as if seeing him for the very first time.
And Hael… forgot how to breathe.
Time didn't move. The room, the world—it all seemed to still. It was just the two of them. The sorcerer and the newborn. The man who had known battlefields and broken oaths, and the girl who had only just begun to exist.
He didn't know what she saw when she looked at him.
He only knew what he saw: something fragile, something whole. Something that, for reasons beyond him, had chosen him as father.
His hand moved slowly—hesitantly—and rested gently beside her on the bed. Not touching. Just there. Close.
Zola blinked once, then again. And then, after a long, silent moment… her eyelids fluttered shut.
Still breathing softly. Still safe.
Hael let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.
