Hermes was not healed, but he was breathing again. And that was enough.
The days that followed blurred into one another. Not because he drowned himself in obsession, but because he tried, for once, to live without letting Eirwyn gnaw at his every waking hour.
The picture still sat on his bulletin board. The strings were still there. But the difference was that Hermes no longer let it consume him like fire devouring paper.
Instead, he began to reconcile.
With Ymir, it was small things. Quiet things. A spar in the training yard, not the brutal kind meant to draw blood, but the restrained, technical kind. Ymir's ice blade met Hermes' fire staff, their eyes locking. Once, that tension would have been deadly, toxic.
But now… When Ymir pushed Hermes back and saw him stumble, he smirked instead of sneered.
Hermes smirked back.
It wasn't forgiveness. It wasn't forgetting. But it was a step forward.
