Neudämmerung — Main Courtyard. Dawn.
The sun hadn't fully risen when the first carriages arrived.
Kaito had been in the courtyard since before.
Alone.
No announcement, no protocol, no Gorman at his side with papers.
Just him, the black gloves, and the sound of wheels on wet cobblestones.
The first one entered through the main gate with a squeal that echoed off the empty walls.
Then the second.
The third.
And after that, they stopped being easy to count.
---
The refugees from Dreisburg descended in silence.
That was the first thing Kaito noticed.
Not the number. Not the faces. The silence.
Four hundred twelve displaced people make noise. They cry. They argue. Children ask things. The elderly complain about the cold.
But these got off quietly.
The kind of silence that comes after there's no energy left for anything else.
Processing: travel fatigue. Displacement shock. Loss of spatial references — their home no longer exists.
