When the Village Sleeps

Previously

…The despair was a tangible thing, a suffocating cloak that threatened to drag her down. Yet, beneath it, a flicker of defiance ignited. She was a healer. She would not give up. She would find a way, even if it meant venturing into the forgotten corners of their village’s past, into the realm of stories and secrets that Elara had always guarded so fiercely. The path ahead was uncertain, shrouded in the same mystery that afflicted her people, but she would walk it, one weary step at a time, for the sake of Anya, for the sake of Elara, and for the sake of the village that slept, ill and afraid, under the watchful gaze of the darkening sky.