Eis doesn’t wake to silence anymore.

  She wakes to noise.

  Tomm is already running between rooms trying to find his boots.

  Nia is humming to herself as she feeds the small glass birds Lira created for her — enchanted, harmless, chirping softly in the window.

  And Elara is in the kitchen, focused and stern, already sweeping.

  “You don’t need to do that every day,” Eis tells her, half amused.

  “If I don’t, Tomm will spill flour again.”

  “That was one time!” comes the protest from the hallway.

  Eis simply smiles and starts preparing the morning meal.

  The children always insist on helping — Nia passing ingredients, Tomm trying to “improve” Eis’s grill enchantment (and getting singed fingers for it), and Elara silently monitoring them both like a general with a battle plan.

  By sunrise, the smell of roasted bread and spiced meat fills the home.

  Outside, the city stirs — and with it, Eis’s window vendor opens once more.

  The stall has changed.

  Where once it was a quiet corner with a single cook, now it’s a lively family effort.

  Elara handles customers when the line grows.

  Tomm takes orders and, more often than not, talks too much to the artisans waiting.

  Nia sits by the window with a little sign she painted herself: “Free food for little ones!”

  The locals adore them.

  “Miss Eis’s helpers,” they call them.

  One afternoon, Lira stops by, watching the bustle with arms crossed and a smile.

  “They’ve turned this place into a guild of their own.”

  “They’re efficient,” Eis replies.

  “They’re happy,” Lira corrects, reaching down to ruffle Nia’s hair. “And so are you.”

  Eis doesn’t answer, but her eyes soften as she hands Lira her usual meal.

  Tomm’s fascination with magic-craft has only grown.

  Every night after closing, he sits at Eis’s workbench surrounded by scraps — broken trinkets, copper wire, tiny lenses.

  He looks up at her one evening.

  “Miss Eis… can I learn how to make things like you do?”

  “You can’t make them exactly like me,” she says, setting down her tea. “The way I make is… different.”

  “But you can teach me the other parts, right?”

  She studies him — his eager eyes, his stained fingers, the way his mind already works faster than his words.

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  “Yes. But you’ll have to learn patience first.”

  “I can be patient!”

  From the next room, Elara shouts,

  “No, he can’t!”

  Tomm groans. Eis hides a smile behind her cup.

  “We’ll start tomorrow,” she says.

  He beams.

  And true to her word, she does.

  Every morning before opening, she teaches him the basics: how to inscribe simple glyphs, how to feel the pulse of a rune, how to listen for balance instead of forcing energy.

  He’s clumsy at first, but eager. And when he finally gets a charm to glow faintly, his shout of triumph nearly startles the entire block.

  Elara rarely asks for help, but she’s the quiet core of the household.

  Eis has seen her shoulders relax slowly over the weeks — the wary tension fading from her posture.

  One evening, as they both tidy up after dinner, Elara asks softly,

  “Why did you take us in?”

  The question stops Eis mid-motion.

  She sets the dish aside.

  “Because no one should grow up without someone to look out for them.”

  Elara hesitates.

  “You didn’t even know us.”

  “I didn’t have to.”

  Silence. Then, very quietly:

  “Thank you.”

  It’s the first time she’s said it aloud.

  Later that night, Eis finds her asleep at the table with an open book — a small, earnest smile on her face. She drapes a blanket over her shoulders and leaves her be.

  Nia remains the heart of the household — a soft constant in the noise.

  She helps with cooking, sings while sweeping, and spends afternoons watching the enchanted birds flit through Eis’s workshop.

  One rainy evening, she climbs into Eis’s lap unprompted while Eis is writing the day’s notes.

  “Are we staying here forever?”

  Eis pauses.

  “Do you want to?”

  “Mhm.”

  “Then we are.”

  Nia grins sleepily, curls closer, and falls asleep before Eis can say anything more.

  The rain drums softly outside.

  Eis sets her pen down and just sits there, feeling the quiet weight of Nia’s warmth — something steadier than any magic she’s ever made.

  Every few days, Ronan, Lira, and Kael stop by.

  They’re part of the family now, too, though none of them ever call it that aloud.

  Ronan helps fix the door hinges that keep sticking.

  Kael brings sweets from the markets “for Tomm’s experiments” (which somehow always end up eaten).

  Lira reads with Elara, animatedly acting out stories that have Nia in hysterical giggles.

  After they leave, Ronan often lingers — quiet, steady, the smell of rain and steel always clinging faintly to him.

  Sometimes, after the kids are asleep, he sits with Eis by the canal rail.

  No grand words, no confessions — just quiet company, comfortable and close.

  Once, as the lantern light ripples across the water, he says,

  “You built something beautiful here, Eis.”

  “I didn’t plan to.”

  “The best things never are.”

  He looks at her, and for a long moment, neither of them speak.

  The world beyond Eis’s walls moves on — kingdoms rise, guilds bicker, heroes travel —

  but in the Artisan District, her world stays steady.

  A place of warmth, noise, and small miracles.

  A home not built by destiny, but by choice.

  And in that simple truth, Eis finds something she once thought lost:

  not a reason to fight —

  but a reason to live.