The silence settled after didn't feel like silence.
It felt like weight.
The kind that didn't rest on your shoulders, but on your ribs—pressing inward, slowly, until it got hard to breathe.
Lyra didn't cry when they left the valley of ash. She didn't flinch when the Hollowborn turned to dust in her flames. She didn't speak as the camp rode home through a bloodless dusk.
But something in her was burning. Not bright. Not fierce.
Just steady. And quiet. Like a candle left too long in the dark, melting down to nothing.
She avoided everyone for hours.
Ashenya slept in Thorne's tent, exhausted and trembling from the aftermath of her visions. The Flameborn gathered around fires, whispering about the things they'd seen—about the ones they couldn't save. Kael issued orders, tried to rally them, tried to act like the Alpha the court needed him to be.
But his eyes kept drifting.
To her.
To the tent where Lyra sat alone, unmoving, wrapped in silence like armor.
