I take the bowl.
"Morning, boss!" Bryx pipes up, compound eyes bright with an energy that borders on criminal at this hour. "Glad to see you up and about. Kevin and I had a bet going on what time you'd surface after how much drink you put away last night." He leans toward Mora conspiratorially. "What time is it?"
"Half-past eight," she answers.
"Dammit," Bryx snaps his fingers. "Kevin, you might have won this round. But I'm thinking we do double or nothing on the next go. I've got a system."
"Your system," Mora says mildly, "is guessing randomly and then claiming it was strategy."
"Itisstrategy. It's called intuitive forecasting."
I give Mora a slight nod, the closest I can manage to gratitude, and carry my bowl away from their warmth. Not because I don't appreciate it. Because being around people who care about me only makes the silence feel heavier.
I spot Sarnyx off to the side, hunched over a map spread across a makeshift table made of flat stones stacked together and topped with a plank of smoothed bark. A few of the locals hover around her, their shells dim with morning sluggishness, obviously reviewing some kind of formation or trade route. She's got that look on her face, the scrunch between her brows that means she's calculating distances, probabilities, problems she hasn't told me about yet.
I walk over. "What's the morning report?"
She straightens, rolling her shoulders as if she's been leaning over that map since before dawn. Probably has.
"Quiet," she says. "Patrol came back clean. The settlements nearest the new blooms are stable: Thornhaven, Mossbridge,and the river colony are all holding." She taps a point on the map. "They're adjusting to self-governance, but it's messy. No regency to answer to anymore, so each settlement is trying to figure out how to lead itself. Some are doing councils. A few have appointed speakers. There's been disagreements about trade routes, who controls what, who ships where, who gets priority on the restored waterways."
"But?"
"But it's been peaceful." She meets my eyes. "Genuinely. The rot is still receding in most areas. New growth is coming in strong. Whatever Elle did—" she catches herself. Recalibrates. "The balance is holding."
“Peaceful,” she repeats.
I turn the word over in my mind like a stone with sharp edges. Relief that the rot is no longer spreading, yes. That the realm isn't actively dying, yes. But peace? There is no peace without Elle. She is the anchor that keeps the darkness in me from taking everything. She is light to my corruption, warmth to my cold, and without her I am exactly what I was before she fell into this world. A weapon with nothing worth protecting.
There hasn't been a single minute of a single day that I haven't thought about her. I've been digging with Eltrien through the deepest archives the Thornwood has to offer, scouring texts so old the language has to be translated three times before it makes sense. Looking for something,anything,on temporal dispersal, on navigating the spaces between moments, on how to bring someone back from the kind of existence that isn't really existence at all.
We've had leads. Small ones. References in ancient Bloom texts about consciousness existing outside linear time. Root archives that describe entities who once spanned multiple moments and found their way back to a single now. But every lead ends in ambiguity, or silence, ortrust the process.
A few weeks ago, we even tracked the Sage back down. Traveled four days to their hollow, endured the shifting walls and the writing that tries to drive you mad, and got exactly what I expected: cryptic bullshit. “The path will reveal itself when the convergence of intention aligns with temporal readiness,” they'd said, bark-rough fingers steepled, eyes like ancient honey. “You cannot force a river to flow backward, Kaelren. You can only build a dam strong enough to hold the water until it finds its own way home.”
I'd nearly put my fist through the trunk of their living tree.
"There's something else," Sarnyx says, pulling me back to the present. She taps a small settlement on the eastern edge of the map. "Willowmere. They've appointed a local leader—a woman named Thessara. She's been pushing to establish a regional council, something more structured than what the other settlements have managed. She's asked to speak with us."
"Withus?"
"With you." Sarnyx's tone is deliberate. "You specifically. Whether you like it or not, you're a symbol to these people. The prince who helped break the cycle."
The wordprinceleaves a bitter taste in my mouth. "I'm not an authority figure, Sarnyx."
"I know. But they don't need you to rule. They need you to listen." She folds her arms, thorns retracting slightly, her version of softening. "Come with me. It's half a day's ride. We'll be back before nightfall."
I don't want to go. Every hour spent on diplomacy is an hour not spent finding a way to reach her. Not spent pouring over archives, not spent reaching through the bond, thin as spider silk, fragile as breath, for any sign that she's still out there navigating her way home.
But the realm she sacrificed herself to save is trying to rebuild. And if I let it crumble while I chase ghosts through ancient texts, then what was any of it for?
"Fine," I say, and the word costs more than it should.
I go back to the fire. The crew has gathered in the loose, organic way they always do, close enough to share warmth, far enough apart to maintain the illusion of independence.
"What's everyone's day look like?" I ask because asking keeps me functional. Routine keeps me moving. Structure is the only thing stopping me from tearing the world apart looking for her.
Bryx raises a hand like an eager student. "Mora and I are heading through the crossing to check on the Earth realm. Make sure everything's stable over there." He pauses, his compound eyes softening in a way that looks wrong on his insectoid features. "And we'll check on the house. Elle's grandmother Josephine's place. Make sure it's holding up."
