I didn’t move right away. I lay there listening, letting the quiet assert itself one sound at a time. The distant shift of the city. The soft, ordinary weight of morning pressing against the walls. Nothing answering the panic that was still moving through me.
I told myself that mattered.
Slowly I drew a deeper breath and held it, then let it go, waiting for my pulse to follow. It didn’t, not entirely, but it eased enough I could think past it.
Nothing was burning.
Nothing was breaking.
And still, the sense that something had already been set in motion refused to leave me.
I pushed myself upright and swung my legs over the side of the bed. The cold stone beneath my feet grounded me more than the quiet had. I stayed there a moment longer, letting the sensation anchor me.
I stood and crossed the room, sliding the curtain back.
Frostlight dusted the parapet outside, pale and thin, catching along the stone where it shouldn’t have been. It wasn’t heavy enough to be snow. Just a fine, luminous trace, as if the night had left something behind.
Beyond the balcony, the sea lay calm. Almost too calm.
The surface stretched smooth and dark, barely stirred by the wind. No whitecaps. No restless pull against the cliffs. The water breathed evenly as though it had settled into obedience.
We’d spent the day before together, walking the city’s streets, my hand warm in his like nothing waited beyond it.
The memory should have steadied me.
Instead, it made the quiet feel deliberate.
I let the curtain fall back into place and turned back toward the room.
My gaze caught on the stormglass among the other fixtures near the threshold. I hadn’t noticed it at first, which should have told me something on its own. Stormglass usually had a presence, a low hum under the skin, a subtle pull that made you aware of where you stood in relation to it.
This time it was silent.
I stepped closer and rested my fingers against its surface.
Nothing answered.
The glass didn’t stir, didn’t vibrate or warm beneath my touch, but my body reacted anyway. Gooseflesh rippled along my arms. My pulse spiked and warmth gathered in my palms as if something in me had woken.
The power was there.
Waiting.
I drew my hand back slowly. The thought arrived uninvited and steady, settling into me like a truth I didn’t want.
This feels like goodbye.
I hated that it fit so easily. Hated that once it was there, I couldn’t push it away or soften its edges. It didn’t arrive with fear or panic, just a quiet certainty that sat beneath everything else.
I thought of Atlas then. Of telling him about the dream of the fire and the lightning and the way my body still remembered the moment before choice had been taken from me.
Saying it out loud would make it feel real in a way that I wasn’t ready to face yet. It would turn the quiet into something fragile, something that could break just by being named.
I couldn’t do that. Not yet.
Instead, I moved on instinct.
I washed quickly, scrubbing away the last traces of sleep and smoke that didn’t belong. I pulled on black leather tights and a dark tunic, the familiar weight of them settling me in a way thought couldn’t.
