Chapter 9
Silas's Warning
Silas confronts Elara, revealing fragments of the bloom's history and its potential dangers. He hints that her insomnia is a symptom, not the cause, of a deeper wound.
The air in Silas’s small cottage was thick with the scent of dried herbs and woodsmoke, a comforting aroma that Elara usually found soothing. Tonight, however, it did little to calm the frantic flutter in her chest. She sat on a low stool, her hands clasped so tightly her knuckles were white. Silas, his face a roadmap of ancient wrinkles beneath a shock of white hair, watched her with eyes that seemed to hold the wisdom of the forest itself.
“You have been to the Whispering Glade,” he stated, his voice a low rumble like distant thunder. It wasn't a question.
Elara nodded, unable to form words. The memory of the Lumina Bloom, its petals like captured moonlight, still shimmered behind her eyelids. The intoxicating sweetness of its nectar, the immediate surrender to oblivion… it was a dangerous siren song.
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