the Legend

Chapter Twenty-One – The Heir of Greyharbor

The days following the meeting unfolded like the slow tide after a storm—retreating chaos, revealing what was left beneath.

For a while, Greyharbor stood still. No trucks rumbled down its narrow streets, no construction drowned out the gulls. The sea had its voice back, soft and persistent. The people, too, seemed to move with new caution, as though afraid that a single wrong step might summon the storm again.

But slowly, life began to return.

Shop doors opened early. Fishermen mended their nets with quiet laughter. The market filled again with voices, haggling and teasing. The air carried not tension but relief—a fragile kind of peace, the kind that comes only after a long, hard fight.

The harbor fence had come down two days after the vote. When the workers—local volunteers this time—took the final section apart, the crowd that gathered broke into applause. It wasn’t loud or triumphant; it was steady, grateful, the sound of a community reclaiming its breath.

And somewhere at the edge