The first morning without Eis dawned gray and cool.

  Mist rolled low along the canal, swallowing the city’s distant rooftops in drifting silence.

  Inside the house, the hearth was cold for the first time in months.

  It wasn’t intentional.

  It simply hadn’t occurred to anyone to light it yet.

  Elara woke early, as she always did.

  Habit, not energy, pulled her from bed.

  She moved through the motions — opening the shutters, sweeping the floor, checking the bread dough Eis had left covered the night before — but the rhythm was off.

  There was no quiet hum behind her, no soft sound of water boiling for tea.

  When she turned, half expecting to see Eis standing by the stove,

  the empty space hit her harder than she wanted to admit.

  “She’s only gone for a little while,” she reminded herself aloud.

  The words sounded thin against the walls.

  By the time Tomm stumbled downstairs — hair a mess, shirt half-tucked —

  Elara had already set breakfast.

  “She’s probably halfway to the forest by now,” Tomm muttered between bites.

  “You think it’s really calling her? The mark thing?”

  Elara shrugged.

  “She doesn’t lie.”

  “Yeah, but she doesn’t explain either.”

  He meant it half-jokingly, but it came out more brittle than he intended.

  Nia looked up from her seat, eyes wide and uncertain.

  “She’ll come back,” she said quietly.

  “She promised.”

  That stopped both of them.

  Because Eis’s promises weren’t like other people’s.

  When she said something, it was.

  Elara reached over and squeezed Nia’s hand.

  “Then she’ll come back.”

  And for the rest of the day, they moved as if she were simply upstairs —

  not gone, just elsewhere.

  Ronan showed up midmorning.

  No armor, no guild cloak, just a simple shirt and that familiar half-guarded expression.

  “Checking in?” Elara asked, crossing her arms.

  “That obvious?”

  “You’re not good at subtle.”

  He gave a small, dry smile.

  “Good. I’d hate to be predictable.”

  He stayed the rest of the morning under the excuse of helping around the shop.

  In truth, it was to make sure the house still felt alive.

  He fixed the loose shutter by the window, carried firewood in from the back,

  and pretended not to notice how the children kept glancing toward the door.

  When Nia brought him tea, she asked in a small voice,

  “Do you think she misses us?”

  He looked at her — really looked —

  and saw the same flicker of worry he’d seen in soldiers before a battle.

  “If I know Eis,” he said, “she’s thinking about you even when she’s not thinking.”

  That seemed to comfort her.

  She smiled, faint but real.

  That night, after the children went to bed, Ronan lingered in the kitchen alone.

  The sigil light still faintly reflected off the wall where she used to sit and write.

  He found himself standing there longer than he meant to —

  hand resting on the back of her chair,

  listening to the silence that seemed to hum with her absence.

  By the third day, the children began to compensate in their own ways.

  Tomm took apart every nonessential object in the house—a stool, the pantry latch, the small clock above the hearth. Elara scolded him at least twice before realizing she didn’t actually mind. The steady clink of tools and muted curses kept the quiet from growing too loud.

  “You’re going to break something important,” she warned.

  “I’ll fix it before she’s back,” Tomm said quickly. “Better than sitting around doing nothing.”

  He didn’t say the rest aloud—but it sat heavy in his chest.

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  The nothing.

  The waiting.

  Ronan was there most evenings, steady and unobtrusive, sitting at the table with a cup gone cold as he listened to Elara talk through the day’s plans. When duty pulled him away, Lira or Kael filled the space without comment. Lira would bring bread or fresh herbs, her presence warm and thoughtful. Kael checked the windows, the door, the roofline—quiet reassurances woven into habit.

  Someone was always there.

  Still, when night settled and the house creaked the way old buildings did, Tomm felt the absence keenly. He’d grown up used to uncertainty—but Eis’s home had rewired him. It had made normal mean safety.

  And now that normal was missing, every sound felt like the world pausing, waiting to see what would happen next.

  That evening, Tomm built a new lock for the door.

  Not because it was needed—but because it gave his hands something to do.

  Because it felt like something she would approve of.

  Elara began to take over the market runs.

  She carried herself with Eis’s composure — head high, eyes steady —

  but it was still too soon for the shopkeepers to see her as anything other than the girl who helps Eis.

  “She’s away for trade?” one asked casually.

  “Something like that,” Elara said.

  She didn’t elaborate. She never did.

  By the time she returned, arms full of produce,

  she found Ronan already there again, wiping down the counters.

  “You don’t have to do that,” she said.

  “I know,” he replied, “but if I stay idle, I’ll think too much.”

  She studied him for a moment — the faint circles under his eyes, the way he kept glancing toward the stairs,

  like he expected Eis to come down any second.

  “You worry about her,” she said simply.

  “It’s what I do.”

  “Then we have something in common.”

  That earned a quiet laugh from him — the kind that hurt a little at the edges.

  Nia had grown clingier since Eis left.

  She still hummed while helping around the kitchen,

  but every evening she’d sit by the window until the lanterns outside blurred from tired eyes.

  Ronan noticed.

  He started stopping by earlier,

  bringing little things — candied fruit, a tiny wooden bird carved from scrap.

  “She likes birds,” he told Elara when she gave him a look.

  “Reminds her of the one Eis made.”

  When he handed it to Nia, she held it carefully, almost reverently.

  “Did you make this?”

  “No,” he said honestly. “But I thought she’d like it.”

  “She would,” Nia said softly,

  then added with a shy smile, “and so do I.”

  That night, when the others slept,

  she whispered to the little wooden bird by her bed:

  “Come back soon, Mom. We’re all still here.”

  The rain came suddenly that morning—

  a hard, cleansing downpour that turned the cobblestones into mirrors.

  Ronan was already at the house when it started. He helped Elara pull the laundry in from the line, hands quick and practiced, while Tomm dashed out to rescue one of his half-finished inventions before it drowned under the weight of the water.

  Lira arrived not long after, cloak damp at the hem, a basket of bread tucked under one arm. She shook the rain from her hair at the door, laughing softly as Nia rushed to help her. Kael followed closer to evening, rain-slicked and quiet, checking the windows and the latch before settling into his usual place near the wall.

  By nightfall, the rain softened into a steady patter—the kind that filled the kitchen with the gentle sound of safety.

  They sat together at dinner—Elara, Tomm, Nia, Ronan, Lira, and Kael—sharing stew that came close enough to Eis’s recipe to feel like memory. No one commented on the difference. They all noticed it anyway.

  “Do you think she’s in the forest right now?” Nia asked, spoon hovering over her bowl.

  “Probably,” Tomm said. “Bet she’s scaring monsters just by looking at them.”

  Kael smiled faintly.

  “That sounds like her.”

  Kael chuckled under his breath. Lira nodded once, as if she could picture it clearly.

  Ronan didn’t speak at first. He listened to the rain, to the quiet hum of the house filled with people who were waiting in the same way he was. He let himself imagine her out there—cloak damp, eyes sharp, moving with that calm certainty that always seemed to arrive just before things went right.

  When he finally spoke, it was barely above a whisper.

  “She’ll come back with the dawn. That’s how she does things.”

  The children nodded.

  Lira rested a hand lightly on Nia’s shoulder. Kael’s gaze drifted to the door, thoughtful.

  They believed him.

  And maybe—between all of them—that was enough to make it true.

  By the end of the week, the rhythm had adjusted.

  The house ran smoothly again — not perfectly, not effortlessly,

  but enough.

  Elara had learned the markets.

  Tomm had finished fixing the clock.

  Nia had painted a small picture of the four of them — with an empty space at the table left uncolored.

  Ronan still visited every day.

  He claimed it was “guild business,” but everyone knew better.

  That night, as the lanterns outside flickered on,

  he lingered by the window once more.

  The sigil’s faint resonance — the one that had lived in the air since Eis’s departure —

  was gone now.

  The silence left behind was sharper, expectant.

  He knew that feeling.

  He’d felt it after battles,

  when the world went still just before the survivors came walking back through the smoke.

  And for the first time all week,

  he allowed himself to hope that maybe tomorrow,

  the door would open and she’d be standing there again —

  calm, intact, carrying that same faint smile that meant I told you I’d return.

  By the seventh night, the house no longer felt empty —

  it simply felt like it was holding its breath.