The moment the light from the phone screen faded, the darkness in the room felt different. It was no longer a solid, hopeless blackness. Instead, it now felt like a heavy blanket of anticipation, as if the room itself was holding its breath. Silica's message seemed to hang in the air around them, a ghostly promise that had replaced their despair with a fragile and terrifying sense of hope. Her words were a map to a possibility they couldn't yet see: The wolf is wounded. The jackals are circling.
Ace sat in the silence, the cold, dead burner phone gripped tightly in his bound hands. The others had retreated into their own thoughts, but the feeling in the room had shifted. The occasional sniffle or shaky breath was no longer a sound of someone giving up. Now, it was a sound of strained patience. They were all waiting. The arrival of dawn was their only goal.
