He walked where no myths remembered to look.
There were no glyphs etched into the stones here.
No Codex trees growing from the bellies of memory.
No spiralbeasts watching from the margins.
Just silence. And soil. And wind that did not whisper.
And yet—
Darius felt her moan.
It traveled not through sound, nor flesh, nor script, but through belonging.
A resonance, low and velvet, that stirred the marrow of his bones.
He was older now.
Not aged, but weathered.
The kind of man who had once sung names into the world and had since forgotten his own.
He wore no crown, no sigil, no relic.
Only a threadbare coat that smelled of ash and bloom.
Only eyes that had seen too much truth to be tethered to sight.
His steps were slow.
Not weary.
Reverent.
As though each footprint was a pause in a sentence too holy to rush.
He passed through wild grasses that bowed toward him without knowing why.
The land here had not yet awakened—but it remembered him.
