The forest behind them whispered with life again, but the silence it left in Caelen's chest lingered like a bruise. He and Elira walked the starlit trail, side by side, but for the first time in days, neither spoke. Not out of distance — but reverence.
"You felt it too, didn't you?" Elira finally asked. Her voice was soft, cautious. "That moment. When it nearly pulled you under."
Caelen nodded, his gaze on the moon-dappled path ahead. "I saw myself in them. The boy. The numbness. It was... familiar."
She stopped walking, forcing him to face her. "You've carried the weight of this world too long, Caelen. You still think you deserve to suffer for it."
His jaw clenched. "Not deserve. But accept. If someone has to carry it—"
"It doesn't always have to be you." She stepped closer, her hands brushing his. "You're not alone anymore. I won't let the curse take you the way it almost did back there."
He searched her face. The fire in her, the unyielding storm. "And what if I am the curse now? What if what I've become—what I felt back there—isn't just a wound, but a door?"
Elira didn't flinch. "Then I'll stand in it with you."
He looked down, then away. "You don't know what that could mean."
"I do," she said, voice fierce. "I saw your memories in the illusion. Every wound, every scar. And I still chose you."
Caelen's throat tightened. "You saw everything?"
Elira nodded. "Every kindness. Every failure. Every time you bled for someone who would never know your name." She touched the Weeping Blade at his side. "You're not just the Ashbound, Caelen. You're the soul of what's left of this world. And I won't let the shadows define you."
They stood under the starlight, the silence now deeper, more sacred.
After a long pause, Caelen exhaled. "When I touched the earth in the grove, I felt something. Not just pain, not just memory… but a call. Faint. From the north."
Elira straightened. "A voice?"
"A place," he corrected. "Or what's left of one. Something broken. Familiar. And I think... someone is waiting for us there."
Her eyes narrowed. "You think it's him?"
"No," Caelen said slowly. "I think it's me. Or a version of me. Something I left behind long ago. A shadow I never faced."
Elira stepped closer, voice quiet. "Then we go together."
He reached for her hand, and when their fingers touched, the warmth spread like sunrise.
That night, as they camped beneath a canopy of stars, Caelen didn't sleep. He sat beside the fire, the Weeping Blade across his lap, and stared into the flames. The wind whispered through the trees, carrying fragments of a forgotten lullaby — one his mother used to hum, before the curse, before the world cracked open.
He closed his eyes.
"I'm not ready to let go," he whispered to the night. "But maybe... I'm ready to begin again."
From the trees, a soft glow flickered — a silver moth, drifting like memory, landing on the blade's edge. It pulsed once. Then vanished.
Hope, perhaps. Or a sign.
And Caelen, the Ashbound, rose with the first light of dawn — a man not healed, but whole enough to try again.