Noah had drifted somewhere close to sleep without meaning to, the stillness of his own body making time slippery in a way it never was when he could move, when loud talking finally cut through the haze.
Not the guttural argument from before. Something clearer. A voice threading through the low ambient noise of the space with an authority the others hadn't carried, and every other sound in the structure seemed to fold itself smaller around it, conversations dropping, movement stilling.
"She's here," someone said, close to the woven wall, voice tight with something that sounded like relief and something else underneath it that sounded closer to fear.
Footsteps approached. Many of them, converging from multiple directions, and beneath the footsteps Noah caught something else, a soft, deliberate padding sound layered under the rest, unhurried, the kind of gait that belonged to something that had never once needed to hurry for anyone.
