Before dawn, beneath a sky heavy with unshed stars, the Night Market held its breath.
Lanterns swayed like flickering souls caught in a restless wind. Shadows leaned close, whispering secrets that time had forgotten. And in the heart of this ancient, bleeding place, the Mender moved—a figure woven from sorrow and quiet resolve, his cloak trailing faint echoes of prayers long spent.
His voice came low, a murmur curling like smoke through the thick air.
"Lady Everblood walks again."
"Behind her, the Hunger stirs."
The Market stilled beneath the weight of those words, the memory of old fears settling over every heart.
The Hunger was no beast. No god. It was a fracture in the world itself—a hunger born from despair, from forgotten love and shattered hope. It did not roar, did not strike. It waited, patient and merciless, feeding on the silence left by those who could no longer hold their grief.
And now it wore Lady Everblood like a shroud—her scarlet silks stained with the dust of countless battles, her eyes flickering between woman and shadow.
Far from the Market's restless pulse, in a temple forgotten by time and map, the Lotus knelt beneath a broken roof. Her white robes hung thin and frayed, the hem stained with ash and years of unspoken pain. Cold prayer beads slipped like secrets through her slender fingers.
She was the last.
A fragile bloom in a garden overtaken by thorns.
The Hunger waited beyond the temple walls, its breath a whisper on cracked stone.
She did not flinch.
Years before, beneath the faint light of a tired sun, a young girl sat alone on a bench in the temple courtyard. Her fists clenched a half-folded paper crane, tears tracing clean lines down dirt-smudged cheeks.
Across from her, a man in simple robes watched quietly, a soft sorrow in his eyes.
"I hate him," she said, voice sharp and raw. "My father. I hope he's dead. I hope he chokes on his cowardice."
She tore the crane in two, folding her pain into the paper.
"He left me here. Alone. The world hates me for it. I didn't ask for any of this." Her voice broke. "I hate him with everything I have."
The man reached out, placing a new crane gently beside her.
"Then you are stronger than him," he said softly. "He left someone worth staying for."
She looked up, unsure, the weight of those words unfamiliar.
"Not everyone sees what they have… until it's too late."
Back in the temple's quiet shadow, the Lotus touched the worn paper crane nestled within her robes. It was the only kindness she remembered—the only light in years of cold and neglect.
He was not her teacher. Not a priest. Just a man who stayed when no one else would.
The Mirror Grove did not exist on any map. It grew at the edge of endings—where the stars forgot their names and the moon bled silver into the roots of ancient trees.
Here, time did not pass. It settled.
The Mender stepped between trunks as pale as bone, each branch weeping slivers of memory like dew. His breath slowed. His heart stayed hidden.
She was waiting.
Transparency. The Archivist. The Tree-Witch. The one who remembered what others begged to forget.
She unfurled from a hollow knot in the largest tree, her limbs like drifting kelp, her face lined with rings of bark and mirrored cracks. She did not blink. She did not breathe.
"You return," she said, her voice a dry hush across marble. "But you are not whole."
He did not respond. Only stepped forward, careful.
"You've walked far from the man you were," she said, circling him. "You locked your heart away. Buried what broke you. And still... you ache."
The Mender raised his eyes. Calm. Determined.
"I need the Coin."
Transparency tilted her head, bark creaking.
"You seek to play fate's game again?"
"This isn't your first wager. You know what it costs."
"I do."
"Then why return to the same wound?" she asked. "Is it regret?"
"Or hope?"
The Mender said nothing.
"You've watched her grow," Transparency murmured, low as wind in catacombs. "You know her sorrow. You know what she carries. And still you hesitate."
Still no answer.
She reached within herself, and from her chest—a knot of blackened wood—she drew the Coin. It shimmered in her palm, spinning slowly. One face smiled. The other screamed.
"Mend or Gore," she whispered. "Survive or Die."
He reached out. His fingers trembled.
"The Coin remembers," she said. "It reveals what you hide. If you use it, the veil will fall. Secrets, once shown, cannot be buried again."
He paused.
Then nodded once.
And took it.
The Grove sighed—leaves rustling with the weight of unraveling fate.
Transparency watched him go. Her voice followed him like mist.
"You may yet undo what broke you. But even a mender cannot stitch back time."
The garden of lilies was already dying.
Petals fell like ash. Roots curled upward from scorched soil. The air reeked of iron and incense and something older—like the rot of forgotten names.
Lady Everblood stood at the garden's center, her form unraveling. Her voice, when it came, echoed from a thousand mouths.
"I am the wound that never closes," she hissed. "I am every child abandoned. Every vow broken. Every love forgotten."
The Hunger spoke through her. And around her, the air bent.
Figures moved in the shadows—mirages of pain. A woman sobbing beside a cradle. A knight holding a dying lover. A child reaching for a father's hand that never returned.
The Lotus stepped forward, knees shaking. Her silks dragged through the dirt.
"I know what I am," she said. "I was left to die. Beaten. Starved. I carry a death sentence in my name."
She unsheathed a blade from her side—a ceremonial dagger, thin as breath.
"If I must die to stop this—"
The Hunger laughed.
"Yes," it purred. "Give yourself. Be the ending they've promised."
She raised the blade.
The Mender moved.
Not gently. Not silently.
Like a storm breaking.
He stepped between her and the Hunger. His cloak burned away. The Coin in his palm glowed white-hot.
"Not her."
The Hunger recoiled, but only briefly. Then it surged, whispering across his skin, trying to unravel him with truths he had buried.
"You let her suffer," it breathed. "You watched her rot in silence. You knew the prophecy and still you walked away. She will hate you."
His knees buckled.
The Lotus looked at him—confused, shaken. "Why are you doing this? Why do you care?"
He turned, and for just a moment, the pain cracked his mask.
"Because I made her a promise."
The Coin spun in the air, faster and faster, ringing like a bell only the dead could hear. The Hunger shrieked and twisted, trying to consume it, but it could not swallow a sacrifice freely given.
The garden trembled. The lilies screamed.
And the Mender turned the halberd inward—not into the Hunger, but into himself.
Steel bit deep. The Coin shattered mid-air.
A pulse of light tore through the garden. The Hunger screamed.
And then—silence.
The Lotus ran to the fallen man, her hands trembling as they found his stillness.
His blood stained her palms—warm, real.
And then, a memory unlocked.
A quiet room. A child asleep beneath tattered blankets.
A hand brushes hair from a sleeping face.
The man kneels, grief and love tangled in his gaze.
"I'm sorry, my little flower," he whispers. "They say you must die to save the world. But I will not let them."
He presses a folded crane to the pillow.
Her father.
The man who had shown her kindness when no one else would.
The man who had abandoned her.
The man who had loved her beyond his own breaking.
"Father?" Her voice cracks.
Tears fall, unbidden and fierce.
"You were my father…"
The grief crashes through her—a tidal wave of fury, loss, and love too long buried.
She sobs, clutching the crane like a lifeline.
And in that moment, the world weeps with her.
Far away, in a house forgotten by time, a black box creaks open.
Within, a heart once locked away beats once more.
Then fades, carried on the wind.
Because love, once remembered, is never lost.
It waits.
Until someone remembers.