"When will you go back?" she asked softly.
He did not turn. He had plans that were sharp and clean in his mind, like knives lined and ready.
But he felt, faint and sudden, a catch in his chest that he had not expected—the small tenderness he had once pushed away. He felt her loneliness in the space.
"Soon," he said. "I will go back. I have things to demand. I will make them answer."
She bowed her head, and for a moment the ruin held them both like two stones in a river. "Do not forget me," she whispered.
He answered, but the word was not a promise. It was a fact. "You are me. How could I forget?"
Her eyes lit for a breath with something like hope and then settled into the long patience that had been her companion for ages.
They turned from the horizon together and walked deeper into the ruin once more—not to hide, not to rest, but to continue the shaping of a weapon the world would later call a man.
When he returns, he will become a creature that will be feared by many.
