The quiet stayed.
It wasn't fragile, and it wasn't tense in the way Noel had learned to expect after battles. It simply lingered, heavy and real, settling over the broken stone as the group remained where they were. No one rushed to move. No one tried to fill the space with words that didn't belong yet. Wounds were checked in silence, armor adjusted, breath slowly pulled back under control.
Noel became aware of his body again in pieces.
The shard-mana inside him finally stopped pushing against its limits, the violent edge smoothing out as the power sank deeper into his core. What remained was weight—dense, present, unmistakable. His chest still ached, his hands still trembled faintly when he looked at them, but the instability was gone. The core held. It felt fuller than it ever had, like something reinforced under pressure rather than stretched thin.
Then the system asserted itself.
