They left the scorched intersection behind without looking back.
The silence followed them, but it changed as they moved deeper into the city. It was no longer the taut stillness of a battlefield waiting to react. It was looser. Hollow. Like a place that had been emptied too carefully and never filled again. The streets widened as they advanced, stone avenues stretching ahead in clean, deliberate lines, untouched by damage or decay. Doors remained closed but intact. Windows stood unbroken. Signs hung neatly above storefronts that looked as if they might open any moment, if only someone remembered to turn the key.
Noel slowed without meaning to, his attention shifting outward. The pull he had felt before fractured, spreading into smaller points instead of one dense knot. Life, scattered but present.
