It's been two months since Garron's death.
The morning mist draped the forest like a funeral shroud, pale and silent, lingering long after the sun had begun its quiet climb into the cloud-mottled sky. Each step Lyrian took into the woods felt as if he were walking into memory, not earth.
This was the Forest of Verdelune—once a border between kingdoms, now a sanctuary for moss and silence. Trees rose like cathedral columns, their bark etched with ancient script, some so faded they read more like ghosts than glyphs. The wind was reverent here, threading between the branches with the hush of a prayer never spoken aloud.
And still, the silence was not empty.
There was weight in it. Memory.
Lyrian passed beneath a crooked arch of stone, half-swallowed by ivy. Beneath the green, he traced a word barely visible on the weathered surface:
Solaire.
He paused.
His fingers lingered on the stone, as if trying to stir its soul back into shape. The name summoned a thousand echoes.
Fortytwo years ago, he and the others had walked this road. Solaire had been a small village then, nestled between rivers and ridges. He remembered Eira kneeling in the dirt beside feverish children, her sleeves soaked and her hands steady. Garron had laughed as he hauled barrels of water up the hill, sweat gleaming on his brow like battle-gold. Alwen, ever secretive, had spent most of her time scowling from under her hood, but Lyrian had seen her leave fresh bread beside the sick in the night. And Lyrian—he had watched them, then, from the chapel door, uncertain how to belong in a moment not born of war.
He remembered asking Eira, "Why stay so long, if they're already healing?"
She had looked up at him, smiling without pause as she tucked a thin blanket around a shivering boy.
"Because we didn't fight to be remembered," she said. "We fought so they could forget what war feels like."
The words lingered like dust in a sunbeam.
Now there was no Solaire. Only stones scattered like bones and grass grown too wild. The fever had passed. The children had grown. And then, like everything else, they had been claimed by time or something crueler.
Lyrian turned and walked on.
By noon, the woods began to murmur again—quiet footfalls, rustling leaves, a squirrel scampering up a trunk—but it was not until he heard voices, shrill and stumbling, that he paused.
Two voices.
Young. Sharp-edged. And very loud.
"Give it back, you rat-faced cheat!"
There was a scuffling noise, then another voice—a boy's, half-laughing and half-panicked.
"I said I'd carry it! Not give it!"
Lyrian tilted his head. Curious, cautious, unseen.
He crept through the foliage until he reached a rise in the trail. Below, the narrow dirt path twisted around a half-toppled cart. Near it, a boy ran like a frightened fox, clutching a satchel to his chest. He was lean, barefoot, and nimble, with short brown hair sticking up like it had lost every argument with a comb. Behind him, a girl pursued with a ferocity that might've unsettled wolves.
She wore a threadbare robe of mismatched colors and bandaged sleeves. Her feet were bare, her eyes fierce silver like polished steel, and her magic—raw, unstable—crackled in the air around her like a storm held inside a bottle just slightly ajar.
"Thorn!" she screamed. "We agreed to split that!"
"We are splitting it! I'm taking the weight, you take the guilt!"
Lyrian did not smile, but something moved in his chest.
With a cry of frustration, the girl raised her hand, overextending her control. A blast of mana shot forward, wild and unrefined. It struck the boy's satchel, which exploded mid-run—rations, coins, scraps of parchment flying like startled birds.
The boy yelped, tripped, and landed flat in the mud.
The girl stormed forward and began gathering the remains.
"Next time," she growled, "I hex your mouth shut."
"Next time, I'll ask for payment before becoming your delivery mule," he groaned.
Hidden among the trees, Lyrian watched. He could see it in the way they bickered—the fierce loyalty beneath the noise, the way she watched to make sure he wasn't really hurt, the way he handed her a bruised apple without a word.
"Children," Lyrian murmured. "Or something close to it."
They reminded him.
Of Garron's teasing shouts across a battlefield. Of Alwen's icy tone that hid a heart too soft for politics. Of Eira's laughter—so gentle, so unshakable.
And just like that, he felt it again—that strange pull, like memory trying to become future.
But he said nothing.
He left them behind.
The forest thickened again as twilight approached.
He walked in silence for hours more, the trail thinning until it became no more than impressions beneath roots and moss. Finally, as the sky began to bloom with lavender and copper, Lyrian emerged upon a crag of stone. There, worn and half-swallowed by ivy and time, stood an old elven watchtower, its spire broken, its base sunken.
He climbed it without effort, muscle and memory guiding his steps.
At the summit, he sat with his back to the cold stone, watching the horizon where the last light glinted off distant mountains like silver nails hammered into the sky. The world stretched endlessly before him, not as a map but as memory made manifest.
From within his cloak, he drew the letter.
Eira's letter.
He had read only the beginning in the days after Garron's funeral. But here, under the hush of night and starlight's judgment, he unfolded it once more.
"If you're reading this, then I'm probably gone.
Don't be angry, Lyrian. You always looked for something to fix.
But I hope… you'll finally let yourself wander.
You always gave so much of your time to others.
This time, give it to the world.
And if that tree is real… I'll be waiting.
Just don't take a thousand years."
The parchment blurred. Not from time. But from tears.
"You knew," he whispered. "You knew I'd run away."
He leaned back against the tower wall, his voice cracking for the first time in years.
"You were always braver than me. Always first to offer, first to forgive, first to fall…"
He let himself cry.
The stars above blinked slowly, patient and ancient.
Perhaps they remembered her too.
That night, dreams came—if dreams they were.
He stood in a golden field. Eira was there, standing beneath a tree whose crown touched the sky and whose roots reached into the bones of the world. Her face was lit with dawnlight. Her hands were folded. And she smiled without speaking.
When he woke, the sky was pale, and dew clung to his cloak like blessings.
He stood. And walked.
But before the forest swallowed him again, he heard something behind him on the path.
A crack. A snap. And a voice.
"Hey! You left this behind."
He turned.
It was the boy—Thorn—carrying something in his hands. A battered canteen. Lyrian hadn't even realized it was missing.
Beside him, the silver-eyed girl stood silently. Not hostile. Not exactly friendly. Just… watching.
Lyrian took the canteen.
"Thank you," he said simply.
Thorn scratched his neck. "You were watching us. Earlier."
Lyrian nodded. "I was."
"You gonna report us?" Thorn asked. "We're not thieves. Not real ones."
The girl frowned. "Speak for yourself."
Lyrian studied them both.
"No. I'm not going to report you," he said. "But you should be careful. The world is not kind to wanderers."
Thorn shrugged. "Yeah, well. It wasn't kind when we stood still, either."
Lyrian tilted his head. "What are your names?"
"I'm Thorn," the boy said, puffing his chest slightly. "She's Mira."
Mira nodded once, still wary. "And you?"
Lyrian considered lying.
But the truth had waited long enough.
"Lyrian."
Thorn blinked. "Wait—like the Lyrian? The elf guy? From the old stories?"
"I'm no story," Lyrian said quietly.
The children stared.
Mira stepped forward. "You're going somewhere, aren't you?"
"I am."
"To the tree?"
Lyrian's heart paused.
"…You saw it too," he said.
She nodded. "In my dream. A tree taller than sky. A man walking toward it."
Lyrian's eyes softened.
"Then perhaps," he murmured, "this is where the road truly begins."
He looked toward the west.
And took a step forward without saying farewell to them.