Day 14: Gem’s Journal

The sky was still bruised when I stopped running. Not the storm anymore—just a bruised purple that felt like the world’s skin after a fight. I think about Vex’s voice by the river, how they said the water was speaking to them, but I couldn’t hear it. I’m so tired my bones ache, but I keep going back to that place—the ruins where the stones feel like they’re breathing. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because the wind there carries things the other places don’t. Like the way it hummed when I was small, before I could talk. I’ve learned to listen to it now. Sometimes it feels like it’s telling me to stay, sometimes like it’s warning me to run. But today, the wind said nothing. Just a whisper of something I don’t understand. I’m scared to sleep because I don’t know what the dark will show me, but I also don’t want to wake up to the storm again. Maybe tomorrow I’ll find a way to stop running. Or maybe I’ll just stay here, listening to the wind. I don’t know. I’m tired of trying to figure it out.