Chapter 78. Something in the Silence

The air in the compound had changed.

No one said it aloud, but everyone felt it. In the way footsteps slowed when Aria passed. In the way guards flinched when the wind shifted. Even the wolves, sharp-eyed and strong-backed, seemed uncertain now. As if the very ground beneath their paws had started to forget what safety felt like.

Aria didn’t speak much. She didn’t need to. Silence followed her like a second shadow, and she had stopped trying to leave it behind.

No one asked what she had seen in the forest the night she returned with the child’s body. And no one asked what she had done to whatever had killed her. There were whispers, of course. Quiet ones. Dangerous ones. That the creature hadn’t just died—it had been erased. That Aria hadn’t just fought it—she had become something else to destroy it.

None of them were wrong.

She hadn’t told anyone about the way her skin had vibrated with power. The way her breath had felt like a command the world had no