Chapter 174

The Elder

The moment the water answers her, the world remembers itself.

I feel it before I see it—the sudden alignment of currents that have not moved together in an age measured by extinction rather than years. Fire does not recoil. Stone does not fracture. The land does not reject.

It adjusts.

That is how I know this is not aberration.

It is correction.

I descend only when the light dims, when