Day 4: Vex’s Journal

I woke up to the same sky as yesterday—gray and heavy, like wet paper. My stomach was a knot, but I didn’t move. The river was quiet, the only sound the whisper of water against stones. I kept thinking about what Vex said by the river that afternoon, how the light was too bright for the time of day. It felt like he was trying to tell me something, but his words were slippery, like the reeds in the water. I didn’t know why I kept going back to that place. Maybe it’s because the river’s edge is where the world feels thin, where the ground bends and the sky pulls in. I sat there for a long time, watching the water ripple, and suddenly I understood: the river isn’t just water. It’s the memory of what was lost, the place where things slip through your fingers. I didn’t sleep again that night.