A month had passed, and throughout that entire time, Emery had remained in seclusion.
He sat cross-legged on the cold stone floor of the inner cultivation chamber beneath the Neo Terra Palace. The air around him was perfectly still, untouched by wind or sound, disturbed only by the slow rise and fall of his breathing. Spiritual energy flowed through the chamber in steady currents, gathering around him like mist, yet none of it brought peace.
Deep within, his mind was in turmoil.
The death of Gwen was the obvious wound.
In the first days, he had told himself that the weight of it would pass. Grief had its hours, its days, its weeks. Eventually, it thinned into something a cultivator could carry.
He had buried losses before.
Friends.
Comrades.
This one was different.
This one was not thinning.
