Chapter 136: WHERE WE ARE NOW

Time moves differently when you stop measuring it by fear.

I didn’t notice it at first. There was no single moment where the weight lifted all at once, no dramatic realization that announced itself like a revelation. Instead, it happened the way healing often does—slowly, quietly, in increments so small they felt invisible until one day I looked back and realized how far we had come.

The mornings stopped beginning with tension.

No sharp intake of breath when I woke.

No instinctive scan of the room.

No mental checklist of threats before my feet even touched the floor.

I woke because the sun was warm against my face. Because birds argued outside the window. Because life continued, not because I needed to be alert to survive it.

That alone felt like a miracle.

The girls flourished at school in ways that still caught me off guard. Not because they were excelling—though they were—but because they were happy doing it. Happiness without conditions. Without shadows trailing behind it.

Aria found herself in color.

Her notebooks were always smeared with charcoal and paint by the time she came home, fingers stained, eyes bright. She talked about shapes and emotions like they were old friends, like the world made sense to her when she could translate it into lines and shades.

One afternoon, she came home holding a folded piece of paper, careful as if it were fragile.

“I made something,” she said, shy in a way she rarely was.

It was a drawing of our house.

Not perfect. Not precise. But alive.

Every window glowed. Every room was full. Even the garden bloomed impossibly bright.

“You drew how it feels,” I whispered.

She nodded, pleased. “That’s the best part.”

Arianna bloomed differently.

Her curiosity softened.

She still asked questions—endless, thoughtful, sometimes startling ones—but they no longer came from a place of vigilance. She wasn’t trying to anticipate danger anymore. She was exploring for the joy of understanding.

She came home talking about books, about theories, about teachers who challenged her instead of alarming her. Her notebooks were still meticulous, but they now held wonder alongside logic.

“I like learning when it doesn’t feel urgent,” she told me one night while brushing her teeth. “It feels… spacious.”

Arian, as always, approached the world with careful precision.

But even his carefulness changed.

He joined clubs not to observe threats, but to build things. To test ideas. To collaborate. His logic became playful, his planning imaginative instead of defensive.

One evening, I found him sketching a design—not for a charm or a ward, but for a machine that turned sunlight into motion.

“What’s it for?” I asked.

He shrugged. “No reason. I just wanted to see if I could make it work.”

That sentence nearly broke me.

Because for the first time, he didn’t need a reason rooted in survival.

They came home laughing.

Arguing over homework.

Complaining about lunches.

Dreaming out loud about futures that stretched far beyond the edges of our walls.

And every time I listened, I felt another piece of the past loosen its grip.

Elena grew steady and bright.

She didn’t rush.

She didn’t demand attention with bursts of power or spectacle. Her magic unfolded the way she did—slowly, gently, like something that trusted it had time.

She smiled early. Watched everything. Reacted more to emotion than noise.

When she laughed, the air warmed subtly, like a room catching sunlight. When she slept peacefully, the house felt calmer, as if responding to her quiet certainty.

Adrian watched her like someone learning a new language.

At first, he tried to predict her—patterns, schedules, probabilities. But gradually, he stopped needing to understand everything.

He learned to sit.

To hold her without calculating outcomes.

To respond instead of anticipate.

To trust that love did not require constant vigilance.

Adrian learned how to be soft.

I saw it in the way he spoke to his wife now—less guarded, more open. In the way he listened instead of preparing responses. In the way he laughed when Elena grabbed his finger like it was the most important thing in the world.

“I used to think control was safety,” he admitted one night, rocking her gently. “Now I think presence might be.”

Cassian learned how to stay.

Not just physically—though that mattered—but emotionally.

He stopped disappearing when things became quiet. Stopped filling every silence with performance. He remained even when there was nothing dramatic to anchor him.

He cooked more. Poorly. But with commitment.

He helped with homework. Told stories that were less about heroics and more about loyalty, friendship, and ridiculous mistakes.

“I like this version of chaos,” he said once, stirring something questionable on the stove. “The kind where everyone comes back.”

Lucian learned—again and again—how to choose joy without suspicion.

He no longer waited for it to be taken away.

He laughed freely now. Slept deeply. Planned ahead without bracing for loss. He let happiness exist without interrogation, without armor.

Some nights, I caught him just watching—our children, the firelight, the calm of a home that no longer trembled.

“We did it,” he said once, quietly.

I nodded. “We’re doing it.”

And me?

I learned that survival is not the same as living.

Survival sharpens you.

Living softens you.

For a long time, I mistook one for the other. I thought if I stayed alert, stayed ready, stayed strong, that meant I was alive.

But strength without peace is just endurance.

Living is different.

Living is letting your shoulders drop.

Living is trusting joy.

Living is allowing yourself to imagine tomorrow without rehearsing catastrophe.

One evening, much later, I stood in the doorway of the living room and simply watched.

Lucian was reading, glasses perched low, utterly absorbed.

Cassian was cooking—dramatically, disastrously—narrating his progress like a performance no one asked for.

Adrian sat nearby, rocking Elena, her tiny hand fisted in his shirt, both of them calm.

The kids were sprawled everywhere—on the floor, across the couch, half-upside down—talking, laughing, existing without caution.

Nothing extraordinary.

No magic flaring.

No threats looming.

No moment demanding heroics.

Everything precious.

Lucian looked up and caught my eye. “You okay?”

I smiled.

Not because I was trying to reassure him.

But because I was.

“I think,” I said softly, “this is it.”

He understood.

No questions. No corrections.

Not an ending.

A home.

And as I stepped fully into the room—into the noise, the warmth, the life—I knew something with absolute certainty:

We were no longer running.

We were no longer bracing.

We were finally, truly living.