Aron turned.
Balrad was coming up the road with one hand resting on the horse's lead rope, guiding it forward at an easy pace. Behind the cart, someone was pushing — a tall figure, broad-shouldered, leaning into the weight of it with the ease of someone who didn't find it particularly difficult.
Aron knew the face before he could fully process it. He never forgot a face — especially not that one. He had carried it with him for years, the way you carry the faces of people you lose track of but never actually lose.
Lilith.
"Aron!" Balrad called out.
Lilith looked up at the same moment — and across the distance between them, their eyes met. For a single breath, neither of them moved. Then Lilith broke into a run, and Aron moved without thinking, crossing the ground between them fast, and they met in the middle the way old friends do — without ceremony, without the careful distance that years apart can sometimes carve between people. They held on.
"Brother," Lilith said, pulling back enough to look at him. "How are you? It's been a long time, hasn't it?"
"Yeah," Aron said. He was smiling — the kind that arrives before you decide to smile. And beneath it, something quieter: the realization that someone had come looking for him. That while he had been running, there were people who hadn't stopped.
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Balrad appeared beside them, one hand on each of their shoulders, looking between them with the satisfaction of a man who had done something right.
"I heard you did great in the war," he said to Aron. "That the king himself respects your presence in his chambers." He shook his head slowly, eyes bright. "I am so proud of you, boy. Now — both of you, sit down. Tonight I'm making beef, and I don't want to hear a word of argument."
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Later, they sat behind the house on a pair of old logs, the fire dancing in front of them in the dark. The night was warm and still, and the light from the flames moved across their faces as Aron talked.
He told Lilith everything — the journey he had taken after leaving, the long stretch of it that no one had witnessed. How hard the early days had been. The mistakes he wasn't proud of. The things he had seen and done that he was still working out how to carry. He spoke without dressing any of it up, the way you can only speak to someone who already knows the shape of you.
Lilith listened. When Aron paused, he reached over and looked down at his hands — the bruised knuckles, the split skin, the cloth wrapped around each finger.
"Brother," he said quietly. "Do you not care for your body at all?"
"Why should I?" Aron said — not bitterly, but plainly. "This body has faced torments. Life isn't what it used to be. When I lost all hope — truly lost it, not just for a moment but completely — I was in a darkness I didn't know how to name." He glanced toward Balrad, who was moving about near the fire, pretending not to listen. "And then Balrad was there. Like a light someone left on in a room they didn't know you'd be stumbling into."
He was quiet for a moment, then continued.
"One day, I went to the market with him. There were slaves there — men, women, children. The children were hungry. I could see it. I offered one of them bread, and he refused." Aron's jaw tightened. "Tell me — can a hungry child turn down food? He could. Because it wasn't bread he was starving for. He wanted freedom. His eyes weren't asking me for something to eat. They were afraid of his owner."
He stared into the fire.
"So I offered the bread to the owner instead. And while the man was eating it, I hit him hard enough to put him down. I got close to him afterward and said — *how do you call yourself an owner, when you're craving the same bread as the ones you've broken?* I threw him gold and freed them. But I knew, even then, that their freedom wasn't really mine to give. It was being held somewhere else, by someone with more power than me."
He exhaled slowly.
"So before the war — one night, I went to the king. Alone, even though I was technically his prisoner. I told him that slavery had to be ended across these lands. That anyone who continued it would be treated as guilty under his law." He paused. "He agreed. But only if I won the war and came back alive."
The fire crackled between them.
"Tell me something, Lilith." His voice dropped. "The day my mother burned — the day my father fought for a victory he believed in, the day my brother and my sister were taken — was that fate? Or was it something deliberate? Something evil that moved through the world with a purpose?" He looked at his hands. "I have lost everyone I breathed for. Everyone I would have laid down my life for without hesitation. And the closer I get to people — the more I care — the more it feels like I am the thing that destroys them. Like I am the evil. Like I killed them myself."
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Lilith was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was steady — not soft, not careful, but direct in the way that only honesty is.
"You have seen more than anyone your age should have seen. I know that." He met Aron's eyes. "But let me ask you something. After all these years — are you genuinely trying to help people? Or are you telling yourself a story about it because the truth feels too heavy to hold?"
Aron started to speak, but Lilith held up a hand.
"I'm not accusing you. I'm asking you to be honest with yourself, because that's what you deserve." He leaned forward. "And while you're sitting here convincing yourself that everyone is better off without you — there are people who miss you. Me. Lily. Master. Wood. All of them. You feel guilty because they were there when things went wrong. But guilt is just a feeling, brother. It is not the truth of what happened. It is not what anyone thinks of you."
He held Aron's gaze.
"I have never met a man with your kind of honesty. In this world, that is rarer than any bloodline. It is rarer than strength. Hold on to it."
Aron looked at him for a long moment. "Thank you," he said finally, quietly. "Truly." Then, shifting — because Aron had never been comfortable holding too much tenderness at once — he leaned back and raised an eyebrow. "Alright. Tell me about yourself. Six years. How much have you trained?"
Lilith laughed. "I should be asking *you* that. Look at you. What did you do to your body?"
They talked for hours after that — trading stories, asking questions, filling in the gaps the years had left behind. The fire burned low, and neither of them moved to rebuild it. The night settled around them warm and unhurried, and for the first time in a long while, the day felt like something worth having.