Marron woke to silence.
Not the attentive quiet she had grown used to—the kind that waited for her to move before responding—but a flat, unreactive stillness. The dungeon chamber looked exactly as it had when she fell asleep. Bare stone walls. A low table. No glow, no warmth, no suggestion of readiness.
Her stomach ached.
It wasn't sharp. It wasn't urgent. Just present enough to be noticed.
She lay on her back for a while, breathing slowly, waiting to see if anything answered the simple fact of her being awake.
Nothing did.
She sat up.
The Blade lay beside her, its surface catching the dim light in the same precise way it always had. Perfect balance. Perfect edge. But when she picked it up, there was no alignment in her wrist, no quiet sense of this is how. It was simply a knife—very good, very sharp, and completely silent.
She turned it once, then set it down.
"All right," she said quietly.
