They announced their departure a week later.
By then, Meridine had settled enough that six strangers leaving would not knock anything loose.
That mattered to Vane more than he expected.
In Ossara, leaving had meant stepping away from a settlement that had changed them.
In Vaelkirk, it had meant leaving people still fighting.
Here, the goodbye felt different.
Nobody gathered at a single treeline.
There was no camp to stand outside.
No one place that contained the whole story.
Meridine was a town again.
So the farewells happened wherever people happened to be standing.
Ashe spent most of the morning walking the old line of the wall.
Vane saw her once from a distance, moving slowly along the packed earth where stone and timber had stood for fifteen years.
She said nothing.
She did not need to.
He recognized the habit for what it was.
Her private way of marking an ending before allowing herself to move on.
Dessa found Isole first.
She carried a basket.
