Chapter 75 – The Child of Balance

When they found the stream, the sound of the night changed. The burned scent of the facility had thinned into the wind by now, but it had not disappeared completely. The water running between the wet stones carried a colder air than the rest of the forest. When the moonlight broke through the trees and fell onto the surface of the water, it created a silver-like shimmer, and for a moment that shimmer seemed to speak the same language as the metallic ring in Elara’s eyes. All three of them slowed down. Because this place was not only suitable for a short stop. There was something else here. Rowan understood it from the vibration in the ground, Kael from the residue of old magic in the scent, and Elara from that familiar but inhuman call coming from within the water.

Rowan checked their surroundings first. The trees rising on both sides of the streambed blocked their view, but they were also dense enough to break the scent of any pursuit. Kael stood a few steps away, slightly lifting his head and scenting the air. His shoulders were still tense. Leaving the facility had not lowered the war reflex in his body. Elara, on the other hand, looked directly at the water. In that moment, for the first time since the end of everything they had walked through, she felt that she had truly stopped. Not only her body, but the thing inside her had stopped too. The Moon Spirit was silent, but that silence did not feel like retreat. It felt like waiting.

"One minute," said Elara. Rowan turned to her immediately. So did Kael. The fact that those two gazes fell on her at the same time would once have created something else in her. Tension, warmth, anger, even sometimes a strange sense of safety. Now, even though she noticed it, she saw that the emotion did not fully form. The reaction was there, but it stayed buried deep. She could not decide whether the emptiness that difference created frightened her. Because even to feel frightened, something a little more chaotically human was necessary.

...