I woke before dawn.
Not from dreams—
but from something older than them.
A silence deeper than sleep.
The hands I see aren't mine.
The mirror gives back a stranger's face.
And yet… there's a calm in my chest.
Not peace—
not quite—
but the stillness that comes after choosing something irreversible.
They say I'm seventeen.
That next year, I'll go to the Academy in the capital.
I say nothing.
But when I sit beneath the trees at dusk,
and the wind moves like an old friend,
whispering through the leaves…
Something in me remembers what it means to lose everything—
and still choose to carry on.