The morning did not belong to her alone, nor did the quiet that followed the war remain contained within the broken square, for what had been awakened did not settle into stillness but rippled outward, unseen yet undeniable, like a tremor beneath the skin of the world itself.
Far beyond the ruined city, beyond the reach of wolves and the memory of blood, something ancient stirred, not with haste, not with confusion, but with a slow and deliberate awareness that carried the weight of ages long buried beneath silence.
The air in distant places shifted in ways no ordinary eye could perceive, shadows lengthening where they should not, light dimming where it once held steady, as though the balance of something unseen had been disturbed.
And in those places where the world touched what lay beneath it—deep, hidden, forgotten—eyes that had not opened in centuries stirred once more.
