The reaction was not what I expected. There was no outburst. No angry denial. The hope in his eyes didn't shatter; it guttered out, like a candle starved of oxygen. The light simply vanished, leaving his crimson eyes flat and dull, like old wine. The colour seemed to drain from his already pale face, leaving him looking like a marble statue, cold and lifeless.
He didn't speak. He didn't move. He just sat there, staring at the grain of the wood on the table as if he could read the story of his own futility in it. The silence that stretched between us was thicker than the tavern's gloom, filled with the ghosts of his journey, his sister, and my own family.
"I see," he finally whispered, the words so soft they were almost lost in the crackle of the fire. He lifted his head, and the look he gave me was one of profound, bone-deep understanding. It wasn't just grief for Lana; it was the realization that every step he had taken, every risk, every moment of terror on the Blood Sea, had been for nothing. The mapmaker's final chart led only to a dead end.
"So it was all for nothing," he said, not as a question, but a statement of fact. "My search... her pendant... the stories... it was just a path to this... this table." He gestured weakly at the scarred oak between us.
If only I knew what to say. After all, I knew his pain, what it meant to lose someone dear. I knew that there's nothing really that can be said to help relieve someone from such pain, so I didn't bother with empty platitudes. There was no "she's in a better place." There was no better place. There was only here.
Rather, I simply took a fresh bottle of the darkest rum from the shelf behind me and placed it in front of him, along with a clean glass. I poured the first measure myself. The amber liquid caught the firelight, a tiny, false promise of warmth.
He looked at the glass, then at me. A silent communication passed between us. He understood. This was the only solace Lostgrove offered. This was the currency of forgetting.
Because there's nothing really to get angry at; the Greyones are a force of nature, as impersonal as the tide. And even if there is, what can be done? All of it is pointless and leads to death. Rebellion led to ash. Hope led to a grave.
So that's why we drown ourselves in rum. He picked up the glass and drained it in one long, slow swallow, his Adam's apple bobbing. He didn't wince. He poured another.
I left him there at the table, the bottle between his hands, and returned to wiping the bar. The storm outside was finally beginning to subside. The thunder was a distant grumble. In the quiet, I could hear the soft, ragged edge of his breathing as he fought to keep the sobs inside. He was one of us now. The transition was complete. The Ashen Tavern had claimed another soul, and the Edge of Nowhere stretched on, infinite and unchanging.