They began writing again.
Charlotte kept a journal—not for healing this time, but for calculation. Notes. Symbols. Secrets. A blueprint etched in ink for something even she didn't fully understand yet.
Finn began to talk about going.
"There's a city across the sea," he said one morning, hands still dusty from the garden. "Its library glows blue at dusk. I saw it in a dream. Maybe it holds the answers."
Charlotte did not say no.
She just looked at him, long and steady.
Elias taught the village children more earnestly now. What began as play had grown serious. The wooden swords felt heavier in smaller hands. The girls had joined too—fierce and precise, quick to bruise but quicker to learn.
They called him Old Sword—half-teasing, half-honoring, like naming a mountain after the storm it withstood.
And then, one morning in spring, Finn carried in a bird with gold-tipped feathers cupped gently in his palms.
"I've seen this before," he whispered. "Back home. They used to nest in the royal gardens."
Elias and Charlotte shared a glance across the room.
They didn't speak.
They didn't need to.
Something was waking.
And far away—across time, across lifetimes—the wind shifted once more.