The forest perimeter had taken three days to rebuild. Not because the damage was impossible, but because everyone kept stopping to stand still and breathe. The collapse of the Foundation had shaken the land all the way to the mountain ridge. Trees had split in half. Roots had curled into themselves like they were folding up everything they had ever been forced to hold. Wolves from every sector helped clear fallen branches and shore up the safe paths.
But the strangest part was not the destruction.
It was the quiet.
The kind of quiet that felt new.
The kind of quiet that made you notice your own breathing for the first time.
I stood on the ridge where the entrance to the old chamber once sat. Now it was only an empty depression in the ground, filled with soft soil and fresh growth. The
