Day 12: Kron’s Journal

The river’s cold water still stings my hands. I remember Vex’s voice, low and urgent, cutting through the night like a blade. ‘You can’t stay here,’ he said. Not ‘you shouldn’t,’ not ‘you must,’ but ‘you can’t.’ The words echoed in my chest long after I left the water, heavy as stones. I thought about the ruins again tonight—how the moonlight paints the stones silver, how the wind carries whispers that aren’t quite words. I don’t know why I keep going there. Maybe it’s the way the earth feels beneath my feet, like it’s waiting. Or maybe it’s because I’m trying to remember what it was like before the river. Before the world changed. I sat by the fire this morning, staring into the flames, and for a moment, I felt something shift inside me. Not a decision, not a plan. Just a quiet hum, like the earth breathing. It wasn’t loud, but it was there—clearer than the river’s ripples. I wonder if that was the first whisper of something bigger than me. Or if it was just my mind trying to find peace. I don’t know what tomorrow holds, but I don’t want to wake up without it.