Silence had settled over the house like a blanket too heavy to lift.Nothing moved, except the light, that pale winter glow slipping timidly through the curtains,as if ashamed to exist.
Catarina sat still for a long time, on the edge of the bed.The sound of her own breathing felt foreign.
Everything that had happened the day before already seemed distant, like a dream one dares not speak of, afraid it might become real.
Outside, the snow had erased everything: the tracks, the footsteps, even the voices.But some things cannot be erased.They only grow quiet.They wait.
At last, she stood.Her movements were careful, too slow, the kind of slowness that comes from walking through water.
Every gesture, pulling on a sweater, tying her hair, resting her hand on the banister, felt like it belonged to someone else.
Downstairs, the house was still breathing.The scent of coffee. The fire, reduced to glowing embers.And in the midst of it all, that silence, not empty, but full, almost alive.
Catarina descended.Her footsteps echoed faintly through the hallway.Every creak of the floor reminded her she wasn't supposed to be there.Not really.
In the living room, the piano sat closed,like a promise no one dared to keep.She brushed her fingertips across its polished surface.The chill of the wood sent a shiver up her spine.
On the table stood a framed photo:Althéa, as a child, between her father and brother.A moment of still happiness, captured before the fall.Catarina looked away.
A door opened behind her.
"You're up early," said a calm voice.
She turned.Sylus was there, his face still shadowed by the night.No tension. No anger.Just that shared exhaustion they both carried now.
"I couldn't sleep," she answered simply.
He nodded, saying nothing more.Silence followed, heavier, more eloquent than any sentence.
Outside, the snow began to fall again, slow, inevitable.And in that almost perfect stillness, Catarina understood:
The worst thing wasn't the storm.It was what it left behind.