Date: TC1853.11.14
Location: Thornwall / Dead Forest / Nexus Point
Dawn came like mercy.
The eastern sky lightened by degrees — gray, then gold, then the clean white light of a sun that didn't know or care what had happened beneath it during the night. The clicking stopped first. Then the rustling. Then the particular subsonic hum that had pressed against the walls for seven hours, and the silence that replaced it was the silence of predators retreating rather than prey surviving.
Raven stood on the wall and watched the tree line. The dead forest was still in the morning light — gray trunks, bare branches, the scorched killing ground between wall and woods where she'd fought the night before. Black marks on the earth where Skulkers had dissolved. A larger depression where the Breaker had collapsed, the soil still faintly warm.
