The void was still.
Not calm.
Not peaceful.
Just... done.
Her skin cracked in places mine had scarred. Her hands trembled the same way mine did when I first held a broken rule. Her face looked like it had spent centuries trying not to cry. She wasn't fighting anymore.
Neither was I.
The void had no end. Just this. Just her. Just me.
I stood there, hollow, pulsing with something worse than fear.
Clarity.
That was what this was.
The answer had been here all along. Under my tongue. Behind my ribs. Somewhere deep, behind the reasons, behind the screaming, behind the ruins and voices and chains.
It was simple.
She was feeding on it.
Not magic. Not will.
It was love. Rotten, reconstituted, stretched across centuries and stitched back into the shape of purpose.
Love turned cancerous.
That's what bound her together. That's what gave her shape.
Solas.
My Solas.
I looked down at her. At me. At this twisted version of grief.
And I thought:
If I let go of him, truly—if I burn the memory, not just hide it—then you die.
And I knew she understood.
Because her eyes begged me not to.
Her face trembled. Lips parted with a soundless no.
But she didn't move to stop me.
She couldn't.
We both knew who held the truth now.
I closed my eyes.
But grief doesn't leave quietly.
It begged. One last look. One last syllable of his name.
One last mercy.
I couldn't hesitate.
If I gave myself a second to mourn, I'd lose the nerve.
So I thought of him.
One last time.
The field we never named. The crooked smile that made rules feel like rituals.
His voice when he was tired—soft, small, like a secret he only gave to me.
The way he hooked his pinky in mine like he believed that would keep me here.
That afternoon. That sun. The grass that smelled like staying.
The last time I felt like a person.
I held it all.
Crushed it tight.
Then I set it on fire.
All at once.
No goodbyes.
No mourning.
Just flame.
I erased him.
Not from the world.
From me.
His name.
His face.
The color of his voice.
The feel of his laughter.
Gone.
Gone.
Gone.
The bond snapped.
It didn't make a sound.
But Aerimus arched back like something had been ripped out of her spine.
She let out a half-formed scream—then stopped.
Cracks split across her body, not like glass, but like old thought breaking apart.
She tried to hold on. Her hands reached for something that wasn't there.
Her mouth moved around a name I no longer carried. She died remembering what I had chosen to forget.
She looked at me.
Mouth opened.
Whispered something I didn't recognize.
Didn't understand.
Didn't remember.
It didn't matter.
Nothing did anymore.
She collapsed into light.
The void shattered.
The memories unspooled and fell into silence.
The white swallowed everything.
And I...
I stayed.
Just long enough to feel it all go.
I didn't scream. I didn't weep.
I just let myself become the girl who no longer remembered who she had once loved.