Expectations Met

The ruins gave way to something Maren hadn’t expected.

As she pressed forward toward the glow, the skeletal remains of old buildings began to frame a narrow street. Shadows shifted along the walls, not with the flicker of fire, but with the steady glow of lanterns—hung from crooked poles, tied with ragged cords. She slowed, heart pounding, the worn map still clutched in her hand as if it were a compass guiding her steps.

And then she saw them.

A makeshift village, hidden among the ruins. Shacks built from scavenged wood and metal, cloth tarps strung between crumbling walls, the faint smoke of small fires curling into the dusk. Men and women gathered quietly, their faces etched with the weariness of survival, their eyes reflecting the lanternlight. Children peeked from behind tattered blankets strung up as walls.

Maren froze at the edge of the street. She expected shouts, or suspicion, or worse—knives drawn in warning. But instead, silence fell. The villagers simply looked at her.

Not fearful. Not hostile.

Accepting.

An old man set down the bundle of wood he carried and stepped back, as though he’d been waiting. A woman tending a pot of thin stew lifted her eyes to meet Maren’s, then gave the faintest nod, as if acknowledging her arrival was not chance but inevitability.

Her pulse quickened. Why? How?

She hadn’t spoken a word, yet their eyes followed her with a strange calm, almost reverent. It was as though they knew her, though she had never seen them before.

Maren took a hesitant step forward. The villagers did not move closer, nor did they retreat. They simply… watched.

The map crinkled in her tightening fist.

And in that moment, she realized with a chill that they weren’t just accepting her—they were expecting her.

From somewhere deeper in the village, a child’s voice broke the silence, carrying through the dusk like a whisper of prophecy:

“She’s come.”

Maren’s breath caught in her throat.

But come for what? And how could they know?