Location:Seven Peaks — Residential Quarter, Bryn's Garden, Verdant Spire
Date/Time:TC1855.04.12
The hum was gone.
Elian lay in the dark and listened to the silence where it had been. Not fading — not the slow diminishment of a sound trailing off into nothing. Gone the way a held breath is gone when you finally exhale. Complete. Finished.
He pressed his palm against the wall.
Sylvara's wood was warm. It was always warm. But something had changed — a tension that had been building for months had released. The roots beneath the residential quarter felt lighter. As if they'd been carrying something heavy for a long time, and the weight had shifted.
Aren was awake. Elian could tell without looking — the boy's breathing had changed, the way it always changed when something in the air shifted, and his ice-cultivation reflexes registered it before his conscious mind caught up.
"It stopped," Aren said.
"It moved."
