Todos los capítulos de Salt and Starlight: Capítulo 21 - Capítulo 30

Christmas morning broke clear and bright over Mystic.The cliffs glittered beneath a new layer of snow, the sunlight making every drift shine like powdered diamonds. The sea below looked almost still—like glass catching and holding the early light. Smoke curled from cottage chimneys in thin silver ribbons. Somewhere in the harbor, a bell chimed, soft and steady.Inside the cottage, the air smelled of pine, orange, and woodsmoke. A deep, comforting warmth that made Rowan’s heart ache. It was the first Christmas she had celebrated since her grandmother’s death. For years she had skipped the day entirely—closing the curtains, working through the hours, letting grief turn the season hollow.But this morning felt different—alive, waiting.Windy nudged her awake, tail sweeping the quilt like a small broom. Rowan laughed softly, rubbing her eyes. “All right, all right. I’m up.”Lucien stood by the window, already dressed. Frost grayed the glass, but the pale sun lit a soft glow around him. H

The storm had passed, but its echo lingered.For three nights Rowan barely slept. When she did, she dreamed of the sea. Not waves this time, but voices—soft, layered, impossible to separate. They spoke through water and wind, through the hush of tides and the rattle of shells against the shore. Always the same refrain:“Come back to where it began.”Lucien noticed first.He’d wake in the middle of the night to find her standing by the window, the moonlight silvering her hair, her eyes unfocused. Once, he caught her whispering under her breath, the words ancient and unfamiliar.“Rowan,” he said gently, touching her shoulder.She blinked as if surfacing from underwater. “I thought I heard someone calling.”“There’s no one here.”She looked past him, toward the dark line of the horizon. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”By the fourth night, the dreams turned clearer.She stood on the beach beneath a sky full of moving stars. The tide rolled forward and backward like breathing. In the shallows

The house had gone too quiet.Not peaceful—listening. The air itself felt thick, expectant, as though the walls were waiting for something to begin. Outside, the sea lay flat and dark, its breath drawn in.Rowan couldn’t settle. She’d checked every candle, every window latch. She’d traced the wards twice and refilled the fire. Still, she felt that pull—like a heartbeat deep under the floorboards.Windy padded to the edge of the study and stopped. The dog’s tail swayed once, then stilled.“What is it?” Rowan whispered.The answer came in sound rather than words: a slow creak, the groan of old wood shifting. The tall armoire in the corner—her grandmother’s, the one she’d never been able to move—had tilted forward just enough to break the seal of dust along the floor.A faint line of silver light glowed behind it.Rowan’s pulse quickened. She crossed the room and pressed her hands against the carved wood. For the first time, it didn’t resist her. The armoire slid aside, lighter than air.

The world on the other side of the water wasn’t dark.It was quiet.Rowan stood on a surface that looked like ocean and sky blended together, endless and luminous. Every step sent ripples of light across the horizon, reflections of stars that didn’t belong to any sky she knew. The air smelled of salt and candle smoke.Wind didn’t exist here—only stillness. Yet the silence wasn’t empty. She heard whispers beneath it, hundreds of them, threads of voices woven through the water.“Welcome home, Tideweaver.”The words were soft, like a mother soothing a child.Rowan turned slowly, searching. Her reflection rippled, splitting into several figures — each one a faint echo of herself at different ages: a little girl chasing Windy through the fields, a teenager crying by candlelight, the woman she had become now.All of them shimmered and merged again, becoming one.A pathway appeared ahead — silver stones rising from the water, leading toward a faint light in the distance.Rowan walked careful

By late January, the snow had stopped falling, but the cold had settled deep into the bones of Mystic.The harbor wore a thin glaze of frost, and the air tasted faintly of salt and ice. When the sun did appear, it hung low—more suggestion than warmth.Rowan had grown used to the stillness, to the sound of the sea’s slow breathing below the cliffs. But this stillness felt different. Heavier. Expectant.For nights on end, the mist hadn’t lifted. It clung to the ground like something alive, slipping between trees and under doors. The town whispered about strange tides, candles that burned blue, and fish pulled ashore with mirror-bright scales.Mystic had always lived close to magic. But this felt closer.Lucien had become a constant presence in the cottage, quiet but watchful. He reinforced wards along the cliff path, and every night he checked the mark the Watchers had burned into the window.It still glowed faintly—red threaded through with silver.Windy refused to leave Rowan’s side.