Day 21: Lyrkon’s Journal

I found myself near the old ruins again. Not the ones with the crumbling walls and the whispers in the stone, but the ones that were just there—like the way the river bends to hide the rocks. I don’t know why I keep going back there. Maybe it’s the quiet. Or maybe it’s because the stones feel different now. They’ve been glowing brighter since the storm, and I’ve been listening to them all morning. Gorath was talking about the river stones after the rain, and I told him about the shimmering patch near the Obsidian Vein. He said his hands were wet from mending fishing nets, and I wondered if he’d seen the way the stones shifted when the water ran over them. His voice was calm, but his eyes… they were quiet too. Like the stones. I don’t know what that means. But I keep thinking about what Vex said to me by the river last night—the way the water seemed to hold the wind, the way the reeds moved like they were waiting. It’s not a memory. It’s a feeling. A whisper in the river, a shadow in the stones. I can’t stop it. And now, as I sit here in the rain, my stomach’s growling again. But I’m not hungry. I’m just tired of wondering.