Elara read it three times before the chill settled into her bones. She hadn’t thought of Caliross in seven years—not since she’d fled its narrow streets with nothing but a satchel and the memory of her mother’s silence.
No return address. No signature. Just those three words, inked in a hand that trembled slightly, as if the writer had been running when they wrote it. caliross
She thought of her mother’s silence. Of the letter. Of the weight of a name she’d never been allowed to speak. Elara read it three times before the chill
Caliross glass , the old stories called it. The city had been built on a vein of the stuff—a strange, fragile mineral that could be blown into vessels of impossible thinness, or ground into a powder that healed wounds in hours. The trade had made the city wealthy. The trade had made it proud. No signature
The air inside was different. Heavier. It pressed against her ears and made her teeth ache. Every sound she made—her boots on the glass-crusted stones, her breath, the rustle of her coat—seemed to linger too long, echoing off buildings that should have absorbed it.