Flynn wandered deeper into the ruins of Elaris under the cover of moonlight, leaving Elior behind at the makeshift camp. The silver light poured through cracks in the broken spires, casting eerie shadows across the fallen stone.
It felt like walking through memory.
Each step was familiar not as Flynn, the crown prince of Winterbell, but as Caelan, the general who once commanded these lands. His body remembered the weight of armor, the thunder of footsteps across these worn halls, the echo of orders shouted with purpose.
And then… he stopped.
A presence.
He didn't need to see. He didn't need to hear. He knew.
Someone was watching him from the edge of the broken chamber someone who moved like a shadow in the wind, careful, restrained… but not unfamiliar.
Flynn didn't turn his head. He didn't need to. The air had changed.
Seren.
A name, unspoken, flickered through his mind like a phantom.
Of course it would be him.
The former strategist of Elaris. The one who stood beside Caelan through war, silence, and fire. The one who never betrayed but vanished when the kingdom fell.
Flynn didn't speak.
Neither did the shadow.
No greetings. No confirmations.
Only a flicker of silver hair under the hood, a glint of sharp teal eyes beneath the ruined archway and then he was gone.
Just like that.
But Flynn's heart thundered not from fear, but from the stirrings of something long buried. A piece of the past reaching toward the present.
He remained still for a long while after the figure vanished. Beneath his calm exterior, a storm churned. Caelan's instincts whispered warnings. Seren appearing now was no coincidence. And he hadn't forgotten that look clever, calculating, loyal.
And dangerous.
Flynn turned away and began to walk back toward the camp, his expression calm. Elior would be waking soon.
But in his palm, pressed tightly against his side, was a small emblem left behind in silence a broken sigil of Elaris, once carried only by those who'd vowed themselves to the kingdom's cause.
Flynn's fingers closed around it, firm and sure.
He would not speak of this not yet.
Let the world think Caelan died with Elaris.
Let the traitors sleep soundly.
But the ghosts were stirring.
And he was listening.