Velastra drifted through the vastness of Sainara, the sacred candle held firmly in her grip. The air—or what passed for air in this realm—tasted of starlight and sorrow, thick with the scentless weight of memory. Around her, lights danced in silence: some no larger than fireflies, others gleaming like fallen stars. Each one pulsed with gentle rhythm, flickering with the ache of a name long forgotten. Souls.
They moved slowly at first, as if wary of her presence. The candle's blue flame cast shifting rings of luminescence around her, illuminating eyes, faces, fragments—ghostly impressions that vanished when stared at too long.
Her breath caught as she passed the first cluster. A pair of eyes opened within one orb of light. Familiar. Almost. The eyes reflected her—her hair, her mouth, her worry. She stepped closer, and the sacred candle in her hand responded. A thin thread of its flame reached out, brushing against the soul.
But it recoiled.
Not him. Not Orion.
She turned away, trembling. The soul-light faded.
Then another—this one smaller, warm as a sun. She stepped toward it. The eyes within blinked, confused. Her hand hovered beside it, the candle shifting in her palm as though unsure.
No. Not Cael.
She kept going.
Time frayed in Sainara. There were no days here, no moon to chase, no heartbeat to mark the hours. She walked among the lights as though caught in a snow globe of stars, each step slower than the last. Her vision blurred. The candle grew heavier. Its glow dimmed.
She'd examined a thousand souls, maybe more. The flickering lights burned behind her eyes now, and her vision began to swim with tears and exhaustion. Each soul she passed left a tiny echo in her—a question, a memory not hers, an ache that clung like dust. She wiped her face with her sleeve, but her tears came faster.
Her knees buckled. She dropped to the unseen ground, surrounded by hovering lights. They blinked at her, curious and distant.
She wept.
"Please," she whispered into the weightless dark. "Orion. Callum. Where are you? I named you. I'm here. Why can't I find you?"
And then—
A whisper. Faint as wind through pine.
Not a sound, but a vibration in her bones.
"Do not just search with your eyes, listen with your ears, Velastra."
Velastra froze. The lights around her held their breath.
"Noctar?" she whispered, her voice breaking.
The whisper answered again, clearer now.
"With your ears. With your soul. You are seeking resonance, not memory. You are looking with longing, not knowing."
She sat up straighter, blinking through her tears. The candle flickered—its light stretching outward in thin tendrils, as though echoing Noctar's words.
"How?" she asked. "How do I listen with my soul?"
"Close your eyes. Forget what they looked like. Forget their faces, their smiles. You seek the voice of them. Their note in the great chord of the world."
She inhaled slowly.
She closed her eyes.
The soul-lights no longer shimmered in front of her. Instead, she heard them: screaming, crying, humming, begging, silent, and calling her name- tones, low and high, layered like a thousand humming bowls. Some trembled. Others rang with clarity.
She focused on the space inside her chest, the cavity where grief and hope lived side by side.
And there—
A voice.
Clear and calm.
Though barely audible, but distinct.
It vibrated like a string drawn taut. A voice she knew. A resonance her bones remembered.
Orion.
She rose slowly, eyes still shut, following the pull.
Each step was a prayer. Each moment is a tightening thread. The deeper she followed it, the more the world around her faded. The lights dimmed. The tones vanished. Only that one note remained—steady, deep, true.
She stopped.
Opened her eyes.
There, floating in front of her, was a light—not the brightest, but steady. It's core pulsed like a heartbeat. Within it, a silhouette: tall, shoulders broad, arms folded.
"Orion," she breathed.
The candle pulsed.
A filament of flame reached out and wrapped gently around the soul. The light shimmered, quivering, and then surrendered. It collapsed into the candle's blue flame, pulled gently like breath drawn in.
The flame blazed brighter.
Still blue.
She had found him.
She clutched the candle to her chest, her knees giving out beneath her again. She wept—but this time, not from despair.
One name found. One soul remembered.
But Cael was still missing. No sound from him.
And the light of the candle, she noticed now, was beginning to shift.
A sliver of violet laced the base of the flame. Then the candle spoke, "Velastra, time is running out before my flame turns red; you must find Cael's soul."