The wind had changed.It came down from the mountains like a warning—cutting through the trees, snapping at the tips of the pines, slipping between rocks with a whisper sharp enough to feel. By the time it reached the valley, the air had grown strange. Heavy. Still.The trees here didn’t grow straight. Their trunks bent in slow, painful curves, bark split open in places where old symbols had been carved and forgotten. No birds nested here. Even the animals passed through quickly, if at all.Tucked between two cliffs where the sun struggled to reach, a wooden hut leaned into the slope like it had long stopped trying to stand upright. Smoke curled from its crooked chimney, faint and sour.Inside, the old man was already awake.He hadn’t slept deeply in years, not since the council branded him a threat and sent him into silence. Sleep, when it came, was thin. He didn’t jolt awake. He never did. He simply opened his eyes, let the quiet settle around him, and waited.And then he fe
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