They walked for three days before anyone spoke about Vaelkirk directly.
The silence wasn't uncomfortable. It had simply become the kind of silence that belonged to people who had spent enough time together to no longer need to fill every stretch of road with words.
It was Mara who finally broke it.
On the third afternoon, she closed her ledger on a page she'd clearly been staring at for longer than the walking required.
"I counted," she said.
Isole glanced toward her. "Counted what?"
"While we were there." Mara rested one hand on the closed cover. "Fifty-one people at Rennet's Crossing. Nine villages before that, across everything Hale told us. Eleven survivors from Aldern who are still alive because somebody thought to run them toward a resistance instead of away from everything."
She paused.
"It's not a big number, against a whole war."
Nobody interrupted.
"I used to think it needed to be bigger to matter."
"Does it still?" Isole asked.
"No."
Mara said it simply.
