The Circle was silent again.
Not the kind of silence that follows after sound, but the kind that seems to have been there for centuries, waiting. No light danced upon its surface now. No shimmer lingered in the edges of its design. Only the flat, dark stone remained—stone that still held a faint warmth where Selena's hand had rested only moments before. That warmth was like the last ember at the bottom of a dying fire—too faint to see, but still there if you pressed your palm against it long enough to feel it. It was the kind of warmth that made the absence more unbearable, because it meant she had been here. And now she was not.
