A month passed after the Echo Bloom was planted.
By then, the place around it no longer felt like an ordinary plot of land.
It had become a vigil.
People came because Lucien had become too large inside their lives to leave alone in that fragile state between return and vanishing.
His old subjects continued coming.
The Silvermine had been coming as well. So had Copperrock, now led by Maxim and Ellen.
When the Black Mass first appeared, they had been stationed at the borders, tasked with holding the line in case the corruption spread further. Because of that, they had not witnessed what truly happened.
If they had not come to meet King Midas and asked about the situation themselves, they might have remained in the dark even longer.
Since then, they had come often.
All this month, they returned again and again, standing before Lucien's echo as if refusing to accept that it would remain nothing more than a grave.
Edric wept openly each time.
