Chapter 72: The Hungry Reflection
The defeat of the Lantern Walk echo did not bring peace. It brought a deeper, more focused silence from the blight, a silence that felt like a held breath before a new kind of storm. The perfect procedural copies ceased. The pallid water remained static at its new, contested border. The green pulse in the Trench continued its slow, patient beat. It was as if the void had paused its experiments to analyze the data.
The family, weary to their bones, used the lull to mend. They tended their garden with deliberate, loving clumsiness. Kaelen built a truly ridiculous-looking birdhouse, its angles purposely wonky, its roof a bright, clashing red. Lyra sewed a patch onto her favorite dress, the stitching large and uneven, a proud scar of repair. They lived loudly, messily, in defiant contrast to the sterile perfection that had been offered.
But the blight was not done. It had learned that mirroring actions failed. So it began to mirror needs.
