The lantern above cast a soft amber glow, its flame swaying with the draft that slid through the high stone arches. The air smelled of age and healing herbs — basil, lavender, old smoke. Elira lay in the same small sanctuary chamber, the one beneath the temple's heart. The blankets tucked around her were warm, but she shivered beneath them as if winter clung to her skin.
She stirred.
The first thing she noticed was the silence. Not the numbing silence of the illusion — not the deathly quiet of silver trees or ash-born petals — but the honest hush of a sacred place. A place that held its breath not out of fear, but reverence.
Then came the warmth.
A hand. Calloused, trembling faintly, but unmistakably his. She knew that touch. It didn't belong to a memory or a specter. It was Caelen.
Her lashes fluttered open.
He sat beside her, half-asleep, head bowed, his hand cradling hers as if he'd never let go. His dark hair had grown out a little, tangled around his temple. His clothes were wrinkled, but clean. There was weariness in every line of his body, but his presence was steady — as if, in her absence, he had anchored himself to the space between her breaths.
"Caelen…" she whispered.
His head shot up. Their eyes met. The room inhaled with them.
"You're awake," he said, barely louder than breath. And then he smiled — not a ghost of a smile, but a real, fragile, aching thing. "You came back."
She blinked hard, as if the illusion might still cling to the corners of her vision. Her lips trembled. "I… I saw so much. I thought I'd lost you. You were gone."
"I was never gone," he said. "You were caught in a spell. A soul-binding curse — cast by the Hollow Warden when he fell. It didn't kill you. It trapped you inside yourself."
She sat up slowly, her joints stiff, her thoughts a storm. "I… the garden, the monument, the girl with no pain… I lived for years. I buried you. I carried your name."
"I know," he said gently. "Your body slept only seven days. But your soul lived a lifetime."
Her chest tightened. "And none of it was real?"
He hesitated. "Not to the world. No one else remembers it. Not the people you met, not the seeds you planted. But to you… it mattered, didn't it?"
A tear spilled down her cheek. "It mattered more than I can ever explain."
"Then it was real," he whispered. "Real enough to hurt. Real enough to heal."
She reached out with trembling hands and touched his face, her fingertips tracing the familiar path from cheekbone to jaw. "I dreamed of holding you again. Of hearing your voice. Every morning, I would wake and grieve you all over again."
He leaned into her touch. "And every morning, I stayed beside you. Hoping you'd find your way home."
A shudder ran through her. "It wasn't just grief. The illusion — it told me things. Things I still believe. That there are still children born without feeling. That something of Eredan-Mir survived."
"I don't doubt it," Caelen said quietly. "Even dreams can carry truth."
She nodded, pressing her forehead to his. "Then promise me, Caelen. Promise me this isn't just another dream."
He took her hands and placed them over his heart. Beneath her palms, his heartbeat was steady, strong, alive.
"This is real, Elira," he said. "I'm here. And you… you came back to me."
Her sobs broke then — sudden, breathless, unstoppable. And he held her through all of it, arms wrapped tightly around her body, as if anchoring her to this moment, this life.
Minutes passed. Or maybe hours. She no longer counted time the same way.
When silence finally fell again, it was no longer empty. It was sacred.
"I kept your blade beside you," he said, gesturing to where the Weeping Blade rested on a linen wrap. "I knew you'd need it when you woke."
She reached for it, the steel cold beneath her fingers. But the runes glowed faintly, as if welcoming her home.
"I'll need more than a blade," she whispered. "The illusion… it showed me who I still have to be."
He smiled faintly. "Then we begin again."
She leaned into him, the exhaustion still thick in her bones — but no longer the hollow kind. "Thank you," she whispered. "For waiting. For believing."
"I would've waited a lifetime," he murmured, pressing a kiss to her hair. "And I'll wait again, if I have to."
They sat in the stillness, not as warrior and curse-bearer, not as broken and lost — but simply as Elira and Caelen. Alive. Together.
And somewhere, in the corners of her heart, the dream garden bloomed again — not as illusion, but as memory. A message not meant for the world, but for her.
And that was enough.