The morning air of Pearlbay was crisp, salted by the tide and still carrying faint smoke from the fires of mourning. Rael's blade cut it clean. Each arc of the Lumen Blade traced a line of light, its hum rising and falling like a measured chant. Twelve strikes, twelve breaths. Each swing marked the rhythm of a heart that refused to settle.
He trained where the sand met stone at the village's edge. Here, solitude cloaked him. The others were scattered, Khael among the elders, Kaen helping lift wreckage, Juno and Lira tending wounds. They were all healing Pearlbay in their own ways. Rael chose the blade. Solitude sharpened him; silence kept his grief from consuming him.
The sea, as always, kept time. Its waves broke against reefs with distant roars, then hissed into foam as they retreated, as though reminding him that even fury had its lull. Gulls cried overhead, thin notes against the vast, steady percussion of tide.
Then the rhythm broke.
