Wren stood at the edge of the crowd, close enough to hear every word and yet already feeling distant, as if the ground beneath her were thinning with the memory of each quake. Zavien’s voice carried across them, and each sentence landed like a small, precise blow to her chest.
Her fingers curled into the fabric of her shorts, knuckles whitening. Stormbreak had always been a constant, even when her own memories were not. The familiar stone paths and salt-swept air were anchors to a life she knew she had lived but couldn't remember, proof that she existed somewhere, that she belonged to a place even when she could not fully belong to herself.
Now even that was being taken.
Around her, people murmured, some crying openly, some clinging to one another. They had families, friends, destinations and plans already forming in their minds. Regions with names and histories and connections. Wren had none of that. Stormbreak had been the one fixed point in a life full of gaps and blurred edges. Her breath began to come too fast, shallow and tight in her chest. The idea of stepping onto a skyship bound for somewhere unfamiliar made her stomach twist. New streets, new faces, new expectations. No one who knew her. She imagined herself shrinking in some distant city, overlooked, unremembered, just another displaced soul in a crowd that had no reason to notice her.
Her fingers curled into the fabric of her shorts, knuckles whitening. Stormbreak had always been a constant, even when her own memories were not. The familiar stone paths and salt-swept air were anchors to a life she knew she had lived but couldn't remember, proof that she existed somewhere, that she belonged to a place even when she could not fully belong to herself.
Now even that was being taken.
Around her, people murmured, some crying openly, some clinging to one another. They had families, friends, destinations and plans already forming in their minds. Regions with names and histories and connections. Wren had none of that. Stormbreak had been the one fixed point in a life full of gaps and blurred edges. Her breath began to come too fast, shallow and tight in her chest. The idea of stepping onto a skyship bound for somewhere unfamiliar made her stomach twist. New streets, new faces, new expectations. No one who knew her. She imagined herself shrinking in some distant city, overlooked, unremembered, just another displaced soul in a crowd that had no reason to notice her.
Nothing inbetween me and the rain
