The path home wound through silent woods, softened by a hush that felt less like fear now, and more like reverence. Every tree they passed seemed to nod gently in the breeze, as if recognizing Wren and Lark not just as wanderers, but as part of the forest's rhythm once more.
Wren held Lark's hand the whole way. Not tightly, not like she was afraid he'd vanish—but steadily, with a calm that surprised her. The ache hadn't vanished from her chest, but it had become bearable, like a scar that no longer stung but still remembered.
When they reached the edge of the glade, where the ruins of old stones slept beneath thick moss and flowering ivy, Wren stopped. It was the place they'd once made promises they were too young to understand—when love was still a secret word on their lips and pain was only something told in stories.
Lark paused beside her. "Do you remember what you said here?" he asked, quietly.
She glanced at the twisted roots that had once formed a ring around their little world. "I said I'd love you until the ivy covered the stars."
"And I promised I'd never leave," he murmured.
A silence fell between them. The promises they made then hadn't survived untouched. Some parts had withered. Others had held on, roots buried deep.
"I broke mine," he added, shame in his voice like a storm cloud.
"But you came back," she said. "Sometimes love breaks—and then we choose to rebuild it. Not all things can be remade. But some can."
They moved to the stone ring and knelt beside it. Ivy twisted up one of the broken pillars, blooming pale violet in the morning sun. Wren reached for it gently and began weaving the vines between the cracks in the stones. Lark watched her for a moment, then began helping her, his fingers brushing against hers in quiet rhythm.
Together, they rebuilt what they could—not perfectly, not the way it had been, but with care. Every ivy strand they wove into the cracks became a quiet vow. Not loud. Not dramatic. But real.
"I never told you everything," Lark said after a while, his voice low.
Wren kept weaving but looked up, patient.
"When the magic in me grew wild, I didn't know how to hold it," he continued. "It started changing the forest around me—wilting things that should have bloomed, blooming things that should have stayed asleep. I thought I was breaking the world."
"You weren't," she said gently. "The world was changing. And you were part of it."
He took a deep breath. "I was afraid I'd hurt you. That I'd take you into something dark and not know how to bring you out."
Wren finished her strand of ivy and sat back. "You didn't hurt me with your magic. You hurt me by deciding for me."
Lark's face fell, but she touched his hand.
"I'm here now," she whispered. "Still choosing you."
His eyes shimmered, and this time, he didn't look away. "Then let me promise you something new."
She nodded, waiting.
He picked a piece of ivy, its leaves like small hearts, and wove it into a soft loop. "I promise to walk beside you, even when the path is crooked. I promise to ask, not assume. To stay, not vanish."
Wren took the woven loop from his hands. "And I promise not to hold your hand too tightly, but just enough that you'll always know where I am."
They placed the ivy loop on the central stone between them, where moss and memory met. The sun broke through the trees then, spilling golden light across their faces and the soft ruins. The glade bloomed with a hush that sounded like a sigh of peace.
The promise wasn't grand. It wasn't perfect.
But it was theirs.
As they sat side by side, Wren leaned her head against Lark's shoulder again, and this time, she didn't think about whether he'd vanish. She thought about the way ivy found light even after storms, the way it clung not out of desperation, but devotion.
The forest would remember them now, not just for their pain—but for how they returned to love anyway.
And high above, just barely visible between the trees, the stars waited behind the sun—quiet, constant, still untouched by ivy.