The cottage barely deserved the name.
Its roof sagged under the weight of damp straw. The shutters hung crooked, one swaying gently in the cold wind. Inside, everything smelled faintly of smoke and rain-soaked wood.
I moved through the small space in the pale light of dawn.
Anara's memories seeped into me like water into dry earth — slow, inevitable.
This was the house where she had once hummed lullabies to a child whose laughter had filled these walls.
Now the silence was so heavy it felt alive.
A cracked cup sat near the hearth, half-filled with stale water. A wooden toy horse lay on its side by the cradle — a single wheel missing, the paint faded to a pale ghost of blue.
I knelt and touched it gently. The wood was smooth, worn by small fingers that would never hold it again.
"If I leave," Anara's thought drifted through me, soft as falling ash, "it will be like they were never here. Like we never existed."
Her grief was not like Kael's rage or Elias's guilt.
It was quieter, deeper.
It seeped into the walls, into the floorboards, into the very air.
I stood by the window. The river glinted in the distance under the morning sun, a thin silver thread winding through bare fields. The bridge was there, a dark line across the light.
I whispered to the empty room, my breath fogging the glass.
"You still exist. You still matter."
But the house offered no answer.
It held its breath, waiting.