Chapter 71: The Perfect Echo
The stability they had carved out was a tense, watchful thing. The register board worked. The shared rituals held. The phantom afterimages and scholarly annotations, while never fully ceasing, lost their power to disorient. They became background noise, like the distant rumble of the diseased sea a threat acknowledged and contained. For the first time in months, a fragile rhythm returned to their days. The rhythm of a garrison, yes, but a garrison that knew its walls would hold.
This hard-won normalcy was the blight's next target.
