Day 23: Lyra’s Journal

I can’t remember the last time I felt this quiet. Not the kind of quiet where you hear your own breath like a drum, but the kind that fills your chest with something else—something older than the sky. Vex was right about the river, I think. The way it moved, how it never stayed still. I’ve been sitting by it for hours, watching the water carry the things that don’t belong to it. And then I saw the light—just a flicker, like a firefly in the dark. I didn’t move. I didn’t think. I just let it wash over me, like the river does with its stones.