As he called her name.
His face, saddened, overwhelmed with grief and sorrow. The cry that tore from him was not a newborn's wail, but the lament of a soul ancient and broken. It shook the stillness like a fracture in the world itself. From his eyes spilled no ordinary tears — they shimmered as liquid for a heartbeat before hardening, turning crystalline upon his cheeks. Tiny shards of frost clung to his skin, glinting faintly like broken stars. Each drop hissed against the air as though the world itself recoiled from his grief, freezing stone wherever they touched. In that moment, it was as if sorrow itself had taken form — and it was cold, merciless, eternal.
And into that silence, a voice answered him. Not the flat hum of a machine, but hauntingly alive, unbearably familiar. It was her voice — Aria's — deep with sorrow, yet unyielding in its command.
The words echoed like a divine decree, but the one they were meant for did not stop to listen. The maid — once pale, still, and broken — surged with sudden life. Light and shadow burned through her veins, reforging flesh and spirit alike. Her body grew younger, stronger, more radiant than it had ever been in mortal life. Her chest rose sharply, breath flooding into lungs that had known silence, and her eyes snapped open.
She heard the voice. She felt the weight of the words. But she did not care. For before her, a child wept — a child who froze the earth with his sorrow, a child she had given her life to protect. That was all that mattered.
Her body trembled as she forced herself upright, not from weakness but from the sheer torrent of strength that now coursed through her. Power spilled out in ripples — the air shimmering faintly with warmth, the frost around the child fracturing as though thawing under her nearness. The earth beneath her palms pulsed with life where moments before it had lain cold and dead. Her rebirth was not silent; it was the whisper of a storm contained in flesh, the mingling of light, shadow, and flame bound into her veins.
Her gaze fell upon him — so small, yet so heavy with grief that no infant should bear. And without hesitation, she reached for him. Her arms, stronger than any steel and gentler than any dream, gathered him close.
"...My lord," her voice quivered with devotion and pain alike, "you should not cry alone. For I will be here for you — in this life and the next."
Her sapphire eyes locked with his, and in that instant, Kaid's mind fractured with memories. A flash of a smile long gone. The brush of a hand across his cheek. The warmth of a laugh that had once pulled him from darkness. The faint scent of roses on a windless night. Each image burned bright and fleeting, overlapping with the living warmth before him — Elira — and his breath hitched, a strangled gasp of recognition escaping him. His tiny hands reached out, trembling, searching for proof that the soul he had lost and the one he now held were somehow intertwined.
A soft, trembling breath escaped her lips: "I am Elira," she whispered, "the one who once died to protect what you hold dear, and who now lives to guard it still."
Kaid's fingers pressed against her, feeling the pulse of her heartbeat, steady and alive. His chest heaved violently, the frozen shards of his grief melting under the shock of seeing Arya's echo reborn before him.
Around them, the lingering frost began to dissolve into mist, drifting upward like fading spirits. The cold of his sorrow clashed with the warmth of her new essence, neither overcoming the other — but together, creating a fragile balance. The world itself seemed to hold its breath at their reunion, as if fate bent quietly to watch.
Aria's voice lingered in the background, echoing like a distant, living memory, repeating the decree of her rebirth. But in that moment, neither she nor the child cared for destiny's announcements. All that remained was the bond between them — her vow renewed, his sorrow embraced, and the echo of Aria alive within her gaze, vivid, unshakable, and radiant.