Chapter 62: The Alchemy of Memory
The return to Stillwater was a silent, sodden defeat. The Kestrel seemed to move more sluggishly through the pallid water, as if the sea itself was heavier with their failure. Aurora cried herself into a fitful sleep, her small face pinched, her magic a dull, confused ember within her. Elara held her, feeling the echo of that devouring nothingness in her own bones, a psychic chill no cloak could warm.
Kaelen stood at the tiller beside a grim-faced Boren, his eyes not on the horizon but on his family. He saw the blood dried under Elara's nose, the tremor in her hands as she stroked Aurora's hair. He saw Lyra at the stern, hunched over her medallion, scrubbing at her still-tingling palm with a fierce, frustrated intensity. His tactical mind, which had always provided a next move, a fallback position, spun in a void as empty as the one they'd faced. The enemy had no lines to break, no flank to turn. It simply was, and it erased.
