Chapter 85. The Ones Who Listen

It began with the silence of children.

Aria had grown used to quiet—it followed her now, even where songbirds used to gather—but this was different. Children in the compound no longer played past dusk. They walked in groups. They watched the shadows. And every so often, they looked at her not with awe or fear—but with expectation.

She didn’t understand what had changed.

Until the scream.

It came midmorning, sharp as a blade, from the east gate. Not a battle cry. A child’s scream—pure, panicked, too loud to be anything but real.

Aria and Jules reached the perimeter within seconds.

Two guards were already down—not dead, but unconscious, slumped like dropped armor. A third stumbled toward them, blood on his temple, muttering incoherently.

Aria caught his shoulders.

“Who?”

He blinked.

“Too fast. No smell. They didn’t break the glyph-line, they… they walked through it.”

That shouldn’t have been possible.

Cassandra’s