The road was quiet.
No banners. No ceremony. No parting hands waving from the horizon.
Just one traveler cloaked in grey, walking with the silent rhythm of one who had buried too many names.
Birdsong trailed overhead, delicate and distant.
Grass swayed gently beside the cobbled path.
And above it all, sunlight fell like memory—filtered through a veil of silvered clouds, warm yet unreachable.
Lyrian traveled south, away from Caelondis and its ivory towers, away from names carved into gravestones and vows spoken before pyres.
He had no destination—only direction. And a folded letter, tucked close to his chest beneath linen and time.
"There's a tree at the edge of the world…"
Eira's words still echoed.
He didn't know where the tree was. He didn't know if it was.
But her voice had never sounded like a lie.
It had sounded like hope.
And sometimes, that was enough.
By the second day, the trees began to rise like cathedral pillars in the distance—stone-gray trunks and dusk-dark leaves forming the borders of the Verdelune Forest.
A place older than cities.
The canopy breathed in silence and shadow. The wind, even when it came, whispered like it feared waking something ancient. Stories clung to the forest like moss: it was a place where names dissolved and memories wandered from their owners.
The forest had a strange kindness—it didn't kill, only gently erased. Walk long enough beneath its boughs, and the world would forget you ever left footprints behind.
Lyrian stepped beneath its shade without fear.
He had more memory than most.
But he also had more to lose.
An arch of roots greeted him like a forgotten gate. Beneath it lay a fractured stone, cracked and worn, overgrown with moss. Lyrian crouched, brushing it with reverent fingers. The letters etched into its surface were neither Elvish nor Human. They were older. Cruder. Almost like scratches left by time itself.
He traced them silently.
"We came through here once," he whispered. "Didn't we, Eira?"
The wind stirred. Not in answer, but in remembrance.
The forest deepened. Dusk arrived early, slipping through the leaves like spilled ink. Even his footsteps seemed reluctant, muffled by moss and memory.
He passed a fallen shrine—a headless stone guardian buried beneath ivy, its offerings lost to rot and time. A rusted blade leaned beside it, half-sunken into the earth. Lyrian pulled it free with care, dusted the dirt from its hilt, and bowed—not to the shrine, but to the warrior who had once believed.
He kept walking.
That night, he made camp beside a silver-banked stream. Fireflies floated like lost souls through the dark, and the stars blinked faintly between the high branches. He sat against a tree with his staff beside him, eating in silence.
But he didn't sleep.
Not because of dreams.
Because something was watching.
Not a beast.
Not a man.
Something quieter. Colder. Farther away than the stars.
A shape moved between the trees.
Two faint pinpricks of red light shimmered, like eyes… and then were gone.
Lyrian didn't rise.
He simply murmured a phrase in old Elvish and etched a warding rune into the dirt.
The air shimmered like moonlight on water.
The fire did not flicker again.
Nothing crossed the circle that night.
But when dawn came, something had changed.
Where the rusted sword had lain, now there was a flower.
A single violet bloom.
Its petals curved like teardrops, and its stem glowed faintly—like it had been bathed not in sunlight, but in forgotten moonlight.
He held it delicately.
"This wasn't yours, Eira," he said softly. "But it's part of the path now."
He tied it to a leather cord and hung it around his neck, beside the letter.
Then he stood.
Before him stretched the forest.
Darker now.
Older.
But Lyrian didn't hesitate.
Because grief does not end.
But sometimes… it becomes a road.
And he still had far to walk.