The hills whispered of fire and forgotten names.
From the ridge above, Lyrian looked down at what remained of Caldrith—a village once known for its river-washed stone houses, barley fields, and a quiet chapel whose bell never rang louder than the wind.
Now, it was silent.
The fires were long gone, but their ghosts lingered. Soot clung to cracked beams like old scars. Roofs had caved inward. The wind carried the faint stench of ash and something crueler—burned parchment, scorched iron, dried blood.
Lyrian crouched by the blackened gate, his fingers brushing a shattered wooden sign. The name "Caldrith" was still carved into it, but the lower corner bore a seal he hadn't seen in many years—a red lion with its fangs bared.
> "A war crest," he murmured.
Another conflict. Another border dispute between noble houses. The world had been saved from the Demon King… but not from itself.
He closed his eyes, listening.
Screams didn't echo here—not anymore—but the land remembered. His kind could hear it: the rustle of suffering still trapped between the stones, voices like faded ink.
A group of survivors was camped at the village edge, repairing carts, burying the dead, whispering names over shallow graves. A few armored knights, disbanded from the royal court after Garron's funeral, moved among them with tools instead of swordsThey wore their cloaks turned inside out, their emblems dulled, yet the posture of trained warriors clung to them like shadow. They were remnants—of a time, of a promise.
One of them, a graying man with a pitted helm tucked beneath his arm, caught Lyrian's gaze.
"We shouldn't even be here," the knight muttered as Lyrian approached. "But who else will lift the dead?"
"Disbanded?" Lyrian asked gently.
The man gave a bitter nod. "The court said there was no more need for heroes after Lord Garron passed. Said we were relics—too bound to the old ways. Too loyal to him."
Lyrian's eyes narrowed. "So they erased you?"
"They didn't even wait for the ash of his pyre to settle," another younger knight added. "Called it a 'strategic restructuring.' In truth, we think the nobles feared what Garron still represented. Unity. Conscience. A voice they couldn't silence."
A silence hung heavy between them.
"We buried the lion with the crown," the first knight said, voice rough. "Now the jackals argue over the bones."
Lyrian said nothing. But his gaze drifted back to the shattered village.
Lyrian stepped down the broken path, his boots quiet.
A boy passed him, carrying a bundle of splintered wood. He stared up, wide-eyed.
"Are you…?" the boy began.
Lyrian simply smiled and nodded. "Just a traveler."
---
He found Sir Arman again near the remains of the chapel.
The knight was kneeling before a broken altar, brushing away debris with bare hands. His once-golden armor was dulled with dust and scraped with signs of a battle he hadn't been part of.
"It wasn't demons," Arman said without looking up. "Two months ago. Lord Fenric's men stormed through here, chasing the house of Valen. They claimed the villagers had offered food to Valen's scouts."
Lyrian said nothing. The cruelty of men rarely needed explanation.
"They hanged three women and burned the fields," Arman added. "Then left the rest to rot."
Lyrian ran his hand along the chapel's cold walls. The old stone was scorched, but beneath the blackening, he found it—an etching, faint and half-erased by time: a flower with four petals.
He touched it softly.
> "Eira drew this," he whispered.
Arman looked up.
"She… she was here?" the knight asked.
Lyrian nodded. "Forty-two years ago. During the war against the Eastern Dukes. This village had no healer. Eira stayed here two weeks. She sang at this altar."
A silence fell between them—reverent and fragile.
Lyrian stepped behind the altar, tracing a narrow path that led to a collapsed cellar. Most of it had caved in, but at the far end, untouched by fire, he saw a small hollow in the stone.
And within it, wrapped in weathered cloth and sealed with wax, lay a satchel.
He hesitated.
Then reached for it with trembling fingers.
It was hers. The clasp was a tiny silver feather. He had given it to her. For luck.
The wax bore the same flower symbol—drawn with a healer's precision. Her seal.
Arman approached slowly. "It survived all this time?"
"She left it here on purpose," Lyrian said. His voice trembled.
Carefully, he unwrapped the satchel.
Inside were dried herbs, long faded. A brooch shaped like a crescent moon. A few pressed flowers—now brittle, ghost-pale.
And a folded letter.
> "To Lyrian," it read in that soft, warm handwriting.
He felt the weight of centuries return all at once.
> "I couldn't say goodbye properly," the letter began. "I knew you'd never forgive me for going ahead without you. But I don't regret it. We were meant to stand together at the end. We saved the world together. You held my hand, and I wasn't afraid."
> "But I don't want you to spend forever carrying our silence. So I'm leaving this here, in the place where I first saw you cry for someone else. Remember, you were always the softest among us. I knew then, you'd grieve for centuries."
> "If you find this… it means you're still walking. Thank you. Keep going."
Lyrian bowed his head.
He hadn't wept since Garron's burial. Before that, it had been nearly nine hundred years—when his master died alone beneath a sky of falling stars.
Now the tears came again. Quietly. Without shame.
Arman stepped back, giving him space.
The evening sun poured through the shattered roof like golden fire. Dust and light danced together in the silence.
---
That night, a funeral was held for the villagers who had died without name or record.
Lyrian stood beside the small pyres. Children lit candles. A woman sang a song with no words—only tones passed down through her mother's breath.
Lyrian added a flower to each pyre. White hollybell, sacred to the ancient elven rites of mourning.
Then he returned to the chapel alone.
He stood in the hollow where the altar once rose.
And spoke aloud, not to the air, but to her.
> "I should've come sooner. I thought the world would heal without me. But even after all we gave, it still bleeds. And I… I still miss your voice more than anything."
There was no answer.
Only the wind. Only memory.
---
By morning, he was ready.
At the edge of the village, a path twisted westward—toward forests older than empires, toward lands unmapped even in Alwen's old atlases.
Lyrian stood there, his cloak catching the wind, the letter folded neatly in the inner fold of his robe.
"I'm leaving," he told Arman.
The knight approached, holding something: a small wooden carving, unfinished and roughly hewn.
"It's a statue," Arman explained, sheepish. "Of you. Well, what I remember of you. My father used to tell stories. I saw you once, when I was seven. You stood beside the king and didn't say a word. But you looked… eternal."
Lyrian smiled softly. "It's more than enough."
As he turned to go, Arman said, "Where will you go?"
Lyrian paused.
> "To the
place she believed in. A tree that may not exist. To walk the world she died to protect. That is enough."
He took the first step down the path, and did not look back.