The sea glittered beneath a soft autumn sun, its rhythm gentle against the worn docks of the coastal city of Virella. Trade ships bobbed in the harbor, children laughed between crates of citrus and silks, and the streets sang with rebuilding—a city healing, like so many others in the wake of Aerthalin's salvation.
Elira walked among them, a ghost of fire and memory.
Her cloak was travel-worn, her boots dusted with the roads of fifty towns. But wherever she went, she carried a name that made people pause. And when she stood in the square and told them the story of the Ashbound, they gathered close. They listened. They wept.
That day, the plaza brimmed with silence as she spoke—not just of Caelen's pain, but his kindness, his sacrifice. Tears glistened on cheeks lined by sorrow and hope alike. The Weeping Blade rested at her side, dormant, but never silent.
When she finished, they left offerings: flowers, letters, scraps of cloth embroidered with prayers. And among them came a young woman—bone-thin, tired-eyed, with a newborn swaddled tightly against her chest.
"She's quiet," the mother said, almost apologetically, as the baby looked up at Elira with wide, unblinking eyes. "Hasn't cried once since she was born."
Elira smiled at first. Then she felt it.
Nothing.
The curse stirred in her blood, probing the child's presence. It recoiled.
Not peace. Not serenity. But absence. The same hollow space she had once touched in the boy with no tears in Kareth. A terrifying void where feeling should be.
"She… doesn't feel?" Elira asked, her voice low, careful.
The mother frowned. "She's healthy. The healers say she's perfect. But she's… quiet."
Elira knelt, placing her fingers gently against the child's cheek. The skin was warm, soft. But no spark greeted her. No flutter of emotion. Just an emptiness. Cold. Slippery. Spreading.
And yet—deep beneath that numbness—a flicker. A spark so faint it was nearly gone.
That night, Elira sat alone on the cliff above the sea, the stars veiled behind mist, the waves roaring like distant memories. The Weeping Blade lay across her lap, its runes flickering faintly with unease.
"It's starting again, isn't it?" she whispered.
The curse did not answer with words, but it pulsed—slow and ominous—as if echoing her dread. What Caelen had ended was not finished. The dream of a painless world, the illusion Eredan-Mir had died with, might be rising anew, buried in birth, hidden in bloodlines, seeded in silence.
Her fingers curled around the hilt of the blade.
She had sworn to carry Caelen's legacy, to tell his story, to guard the world he gave his life to save. But now, a darker duty stirred within her bones.
"I'll find the truth," she murmured, rising. "Even if I must walk into shadow again. Even if I have to fight it alone."
Behind her, the garden of the world grew. But ahead—something forgotten was awakening.