Chapter 3746: The Three Thousand and Fifteenth Echo: The Silence From Which the Song Springs

Kael approached Roric not with questions, but with a shared silence. He sat with the young Weaver by the edge of the singing stream, the water’s voice a constant counterpoint to the unspoken thoughts that hung between them.

It was Roric who spoke first, his voice quiet but clear. ’It is not that I have abandoned the song,’ he said, his gaze fixed on the rippling water. ’It is that I have learned to hear the silence from which it springs.’

Kael nodded, not in agreement, but in understanding. He had spent his life listening to the world’s quiet stories, and he recognized the truth in Roric’s words. He saw that the young Weaver had not chosen a side, but had found a new, more integrated way of seeing.

’The challenge now,’ Kael said, his voice a low murmur against the stream’s song, ’is to help the others hear it too.’