"Victory is not silence, only a pause before the next howl." , Fragment Carving, Western Archive
The ruins exhaled.
It was not merely the settling of dust, nor the groan of stone cracked by battle. It was deeper, like lungs long unused filling with stale air, like the chamber itself had been holding breath for centuries and had finally released it.
Dust drifted in spirals from the fractured ceiling, each mote glowing faint green as it caught the pulse of the glyphs. Those glyphs no longer blazed with chaotic frenzy. Instead, they glowed in slow rhythm, veins of light threading through the chamber like blood through stone. The mist, thick and choking moments ago, slithered back into corners. It coiled reluctantly, as though it did not want to yield the ground it had claimed.
Every sound lingered unnaturally long. A single cough echoed as though it had been shouted. Every shuffle of boot against broken tile seemed magnified, returned by walls that now listened.
