Chapter 76 - Chapter 76 – Whoever Keeps Up Wins

When they started walking along the path again, the darkness of the night no longer felt like a veil that only concealed things, the way it had before. This time, it was also magnifying whatever they carried inside themselves. The forest was quiet, but the silence was not empty. With every step, the wet earth softened slightly beneath their feet, and the moonlight slipping through the branches occasionally struck Elara's face, making the change there more visible in those moments. Kael saw it. Rowan did too. But the two of them gave the same thing different names. Rowan called it loss. Kael called it transformation. Elara said neither. Because she had learned that naming what was inside her no longer changed it.