The River Hall had always been a place of noise. It was where the harvest music played so loud the rafters hummed, and where the smell of roasting grain usually chased away the mountain chill. Now, it was a tomb of whispers.

  Smoke and frost clung to the high ceilings like a second skin. The great cedar doors gaped open, but instead of letting in the festive night air, they let out the bitter haze of lantern oil and the scent of things that weren't supposed to burn. Inside, the floor was a sea of mud and wool—villagers huddled under threadbare blankets, their faces hollowed out by the flickering orange light of the hearth.

  Grace sat on the floor, her back against the cold stone of the fireplace. Her boots were caked in the gray slush of the square, and her hands were tucked deep beneath her knees. She wasn't hiding them because she wanted to look tough; she was hiding them because they wouldn't stop shaking, and the sight of her own fingers trembling made her feel like she was falling through the floor.

  Beside her, Mable was a small, slumped weight against her shoulder. Mable wasn't crying anymore—she had run out of tears somewhere near the fountain—but she was clutching her father’s brass medallion so tightly her knuckles were white and bloodless. On Grace's other side, Caleb was a ghost. He paced a tiny three-step path back and forth, his toe tracing circles in the dust, the floorboards creaking under his weight until the sound seemed to fill the whole hall.

  "The festival’s supposed to be loud," Caleb said. His voice was thin, cracking like a dry reed. "It’s never... it's never this quiet."

  Grace stared into the embers. She wanted to say something—anything—to fill the silence, but her throat felt like it was full of jagged stones. She thought of the Observation Deck. She thought of her father’s laugh and her mother’s hand on her shoulder. She thought of Mable’s mom, Sarah, laughing over a thermos of cider just an hour ago. Now, there was just the quiet.

  "Quiet means the Knights are still out there," Grace whispered. It wasn't a brave statement; it was a plea. "They’ll keep watch. They have to."

  Mable didn't look up. Her voice was muffled against Grace's sleeve. "Or quiet just means everything’s... different now."

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  A pot clanged in the corner as a volunteer ladled thin, watery soup into chipped bowls. The sound was violent in the stillness. Outside, the wind let out a mournful hum through the broken rafters of the village, and every time a beam groaned, the trio flinched as one.

  Grace’s eyes remained fixed on the flames. She could still feel the phantom heat of Mable’s heartbeat from when she’d pulled her down in the square. That one desperate second was the only thing that felt real. The rest—the explosions, the frost, the empty chairs where their parents should be—felt like a nightmare they were all having at the same time.

  The heavy thud of boots on wood made them all jump.

  Jina stepped into the hall. She looked different up close—less like a legend and more like a soldier who had spent a lifetime in the dirt. Her vine-etched shield was slung across her back, and the smell of the high-altitude cold clung to her armor like a physical weight. She didn't stand over them; she knelt, her heavy plating clanking as she lowered herself to their level.

  She looked at Grace’s muddy boots, then at Caleb’s shaking hands, and finally at the medallion in Mable’s grip.

  "You three held on when the world cracked," Trees said. Her voice wasn't booming; it was low and gravelly, like stones shifting in a riverbed. "That matters."

  Caleb stopped pacing. He looked at the Knight, his eyes wide and wet. "Is it... is it really over?"

  Jina shook her head slowly. The honesty was worse than a lie. "Tonight’s attack is over. But Niamh isn't finished."

  Behind her, Nomi entered silently. Faint traces of LUMA still spiraled around her palms like silver smoke. She didn't say anything—she didn't have to. She simply set three chipped mugs of steaming tea on the floor between them.

  The steam curled upward, smelling of bitter herbs and honey. It was the first warm thing they had seen since the world turned to ice. Grace reached out, her fingers finally coming out from under her knees. They still shook. When she took the mug, the heat stung her frozen skin, but she didn't let go.

  They edged closer to each other, their shoulders pressing together until they were a single knot of warmth on the cold, dirty wood. They didn't speak of Marin or Elara. They didn't speak of Sarah or Caleb’s Grandpa, they were gone. They didn't talk about Mable’s father, fighting for his life in the healer's tent.

  The words would be too heavy. They were only eleven, and the weight of what they had lost was enough to break the floor beneath them.

  Outside, thunder rolled far off in the mountains—soft, distant, and full of a dark promise. Above the peaks, the unseen LUMA currents swirled in the black sky, remembering a war that had just begun again.