The morning air in Ilyandir felt like spun silk, cool and light, stirred by the slow rustling of ancient trees. Hector stood near the eastern archway of the palace gardens, his white hair catching in the soft wind like moon-thread. Sunlight filtered through the silverwood branches, dancing on the marble paths in ripples of gold.
He stood still for a while.
Just... watching.
This place, this kingdom of old roots and long memories, had raised him. It had given him quiet, and books, and the kind of silence that only children with old souls could survive. But today, for the first time, the silence felt like something ending.
He stepped forward, bare feet brushing dew-covered grass. The path wound through memory: the moss-stained bench where he read his first tome of elemental theory. The fountain shaped like a coiled wyrm, long since dried, where he used to sit and hum the song that came to him in dreams. The hollowed-out tree he once turned into a hiding place, filled with scrolls he had long since memorized.
He passed a trio of elder gardeners, their faces etched with lines deeper than time. They paused in their tending of spiritbloom vines and bowed gently.
"Off to the empire, young star?" one of them asked.
Hector nodded.
They said nothing else. They understood what it meant to leave a place before your story was finished there.
Further down the path, a pair of children peeked out from behind a gate of woven goldwood. He had taught them their first spell—just a flicker of light, nothing more. They waved shyly. He waved back.
The palace rose behind him now in its quiet elegance, all curves and light-grown stone. Balconies bloomed from its towers like petals. It had always felt alive, this place. As though the building itself had a heart.
He turned and whispered to it, "Thank you."
---
Later that afternoon, in the Queen's private solar, he sat with Elaria and her consort Therion. The air smelled faintly of violet tea and old parchment.
"I won't be gone long," Hector said gently.
Elaria narrowed her eyes. "Don't lie to me, little one. I taught you how to bend truth, not break it."
He smiled faintly. "Then let me say it true. I will go to meet the princess, and after that... I will go on an adventure."
Therion exhaled slowly. "Do you know where you'll go?"
"I don't," Hector replied. "But I'll know when I get there."
"And what will you do?" Elaria asked.
"I will live," he said. "Truly live. Carry the souls I've remembered, and learn the names I haven't yet met."
Silence again.
Then Therion rose and placed a hand on his shoulder. "Go with the blessing of the roots and the stars."
And Elaria kissed his brow. "And if you should forget us, may the trees remember you."
Outside, the leaves began to fall. It was not yet autumn.
But some things let go before their time.
Like farewells.
Like boys who were never meant to stay still.
Like songs whose next verse waited just beyond the trees.
---
That evening, Hector walked alone beneath the high branches of the royal archive grove, a place few were allowed to enter. The ancient trees here had bark like glass and leaves that shimmered with echoes of long-past conversations. They were memory trees, grown to absorb fragments of history and voice. His footsteps made almost no sound.
He reached the center — a stone dais engraved with elven script too old for most to read. Here, he placed his hand on the stone and closed his eyes.
"Recorder," he whispered to the grove, invoking the old name. "Let this place remember me. Even if I forget myself."
The wind stirred, and the leaves trembled. He felt it — the silent acceptance.
A memory. A pact.
He turned to leave and found one of the royal tutors waiting behind him — an old elf named Yvalin, robes stitched with arcane maps and runes of learning.
"I thought you would come here," Yvalin said.
Hector bowed respectfully. "To say goodbye."
Yvalin studied him for a long time. "You've already gone, haven't you? Not in body, but in the way only old souls do. You've already stepped beyond these halls."
"Many times," Hector answered softly.
The tutor nodded, but there was sadness in his gaze. "Your kind... doesn't stay. Not long. You are too much of the world and too little of any one place."
Hector smiled. "But I will remember this place. And I hope it remembers me."
He walked on.
---
Before he left the next morning, a final moment passed beneath the Tree of Life.
The pixie form of the tree shimmered into being as he approached, pale green light forming wings and a face that was too old and too young all at once.
"You're leaving," she said.
"I am," he answered.
"Do you remember the song?"
"I do."
"Will you hum it again?"
He did.
The melody rose from his throat like something half-remembered from a dream. The pixie closed her eyes, swaying, absorbing the resonance.
"I will wait for you," she said.
"I'll return," Hector promised. "Someday."
"No," she said gently, fading like mist. "You won't. But that doesn't mean I won't wait."
And with that, the forest let him go.
He stepped past the outer edge of the garden, where the path met the first stones of the road to the human lands.
And the wind, for a moment, hummed the song back to him.