Chapter 191: The Homecoming Storm
The familiar porch steps creaked beneath my weight, a sound I had heard ten thousand times growing up, yet today it resonated like the tolling of a funeral bell. My heart slammed against my ribs with such violence I feared it might shatter bone. Beside me, Dafa stood motionless, his broad shoulders squared as if preparing for battle. In a way, he was. The battlefield awaiting us was not one of flesh and blood, but of tradition, expectation, and a mother's iron will.
I raised my trembling hand to knock, but before my knuckles could make contact, the door flew inward as if torn by a divine wind.
"Alayna?"
My mother's voice cracked like thin ice on a winter pond. Her eyes, those same eyes that had scolded me for tracking mud across her clean floors, that had wept at my high school graduation, now widened until I could see white all around.
