Whispers Before the Moon

Previously

…I looked at him, a knot of dread tightening in my chest. The battle was over, but the victory felt hollow, tainted by an unspoken truth that lay heavy between us. We had faced the darkness, and we had survived. But in severing the tie, in paying the price, had we also severed something within ourselves? Something vital? The moon, a pale sliver in the dawning sky, offered no comfort, only a silent witness to the profound, unsettling change that had settled over us, and over the world. The whispers of the past had been silenced, but the silence that followed was far more terrifying.