Day 22: Sylkronia’s Journal

I woke up this morning with the kind of fog that clings to your skin, the kind that makes the world feel like it’s breathing just a little too hard. My stomach had been aching all night, that low throb that’s not quite hunger but something deeper, like my body’s trying to tell me it’s too full of things it can’t hold. Vex was the last thing I thought about before falling asleep—his voice, rough and low, whispering near the riverbank under the old willows. I could still feel the way the wind carried his words: *‘You’re walking too fast, Sylkronia. The ground is holding you back.’* I didn’t know what he meant, but my legs felt heavy when I stood up, like I was carrying something heavy just under my skin. I kept going back to that place—those ruins by the river, where the stones feel like they’ve seen too much. The fog tonight was thicker than usual, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching me from the shadows, but I didn’t look. I don’t want to know what’s out there. I just want to remember what it felt like to be still, even for a second, before the world starts moving again.