Chapter 40: The Unwritten Return
The crowd that had gathered outside The Open Page was not a mob. It was a living, breathing, silent question. They filled the narrow street from wall to wall, a tapestry of the city itself: fishwives with their aprons still on, merchants in fine silk sleeves rolled up, scholars clutching books to their chests like shields, soldiers off-duty standing with awkward stiffness, mothers holding wide-eyed children on their hips, and elders whose faces were maps of a harder, pre-Calm world. They did not jostle or shout. They simply… waited. Their collective silence was a presence heavier than any roar.
