
The Bloomlands
## Echo Bloom The wind tasted of rust and regret. Elara knelt, fingers tracing the skeletal branches of a petrified oak. Its leaves hadn’t fallen. They *became* stone, smooth and grey against her palm. Ten days. That’s how long it…
## Echo Bloom The wind tasted of rust and regret. Elara knelt, fingers tracing the skeletal branches of a petrified oak. Its leaves hadn’t fallen. They *became* stone, smooth and grey against her palm. Ten days. That’s how long it…
The peaks clawed at a bruised sky, broken teeth against the fading light. Dust devils danced across the shale, ghosts of arguments long settled. Old Man Tiber, they called me, though I hadn’t earned the name through age. It was…