Chapter 119

Aria's POV

The final section took three weeks to write.

Not because I didn't know what to say. Because I'd been building toward it for two years of writing and the weight of everything that preceded it was present in every sentence, and each sentence had to hold that weight while still being its own clear thing.

I wrote it in the early mornings. The hour before the household woke, the particular quality of that silence — held, potential, the day not yet defined by its demands. Gorvan's method transposed: not the walk before writing but the stillness before writing, the same principle of arriving without agenda.

The...