The severed bonds lay in the dust between them, two limp coils of leather. Corvin did not move. He stared at his wrists as if they belonged to a stranger. The pale skin, now exposed to the morning sun, felt strangely vulnerable, the air itself a novel sensation. The weight he had carried for weeks was gone, not just the physical weight of the cord, but the colossal, crushing weight of his own defiance. Its absence was a void, and into that void rushed a disorienting flood of… possibility.
He looked up, but Kaelen was already walking away, heading toward the group of smiths and carpenters gathering around the great ironwood lintel. The moment had been quiet, personal, devoid of ceremony. It was not an announcement of forgiveness, but a simple statement of fact: *You are no longer defined by your past actions.*
