The inner hall held a silence unlike the one that lay beyond the walls. Outside, the night had bent beneath something ancient and newly awakened; here, within stone and shadow, the quiet was older still—woven into the very bones of the place, steeped in memory, in things long buried and rarely spoken.
Candles burned low along the carved walls, their flames wavering as though uncertain whether to remain or flee. The air carried a faint chill, not biting, but lingering—like the echo of something that had once passed through and never quite left.
Elara stood at the center of it.
She had not moved for some time.
Her breath came slow, measured, yet there was a tremor beneath it—subtle, almost imperceptible, though her fingers betrayed her. They curled slightly against her palms, as though testing something unseen, something newly awakened beneath her skin.
It had not faded.
That presence.
That… awareness.
