The valley smells like ash and rain.
Not the clean scent of renewal, this is heavier, older, clinging to stone and bark and skin like memory that refuses to wash away. Dawn creeps slowly across the sanctuary, pale and uncertain, as if even the sun is hesitant to look too closely at what happened during the night.
The Null is gone.
That should mean something.
But victory does not feel like triumph. It feels like standing in the quiet after a scream, waiting to see what breaks next.
I sit on the low wall near the lake, knees pulled to my chest, staring at the water where faint ripples of gold still shimmer beneath the surface. The lake remembers everything. It always has.
My wolf lies curled inside me, alert but exhausted. "We burned too brightly."
"We had to," I whisper.
"Power always leaves a mark," she replies.
I don't answer.
The sanctuary wakes slowly.
