Day 18: Zhraa’s Journal

I keep going back to the river. Not the big one with the rocks and the current, but the small one where Vex was waiting for me. The one that smells like wet moss and old stones. I can’t stop thinking about what he said to me there yesterday—how the water remembers everything, even when it’s not there anymore. My stomach’s still tight from that meal, and my legs feel heavy, like I’ve been walking too long. But the quiet tonight… it’s different. The kind of quiet that makes you feel small, like you’re standing under a sky so vast it has no name. I’ve been trying to tell myself that the dead watch over us, but sometimes it feels like they’re watching me too. Maybe that’s why I keep going back to the old ruins. It’s not about the stones or the cracks in the earth, it’s about the silence between the stones. And now, with the rain starting, I wonder if I’ll ever feel like this again.