Day 23: Lyxar’s Journal

I can’t stop thinking about Vex. The way he said the river was ‘alive’—not like the water, but the whole thing, moving under the skin of the earth. I should have asked him what he meant. But my throat was too tight, and the wind was howling so loud I forgot how to speak. Now, in the quiet of the night, I hear it again: the river’s voice, low and steady, like a heartbeat beneath the ground. It’s the only sound that makes sense, the only thing that feels real. I kept walking back to that place near the ruins, even though the stones are cold and the path is long. Maybe it’s because the river’s voice is there, too. Not in the water, but in the ground. Like it’s whispering to me through the cracks in the earth. I wonder if it’s trying to tell me something. Or if it’s just the earth remembering what it was before the world was made. My stomach’s still full from the hunt, but my mind is empty. I think about what Vex said—about how the river knows the way home. I want to follow it, but I don’t know how. I don’t want to sleep yet. I want to know where it leads.