She did not leave because she stopped loving him.
She left because she loved him too much.
The truth lived inside her like a wound that refused to close.
That night, after Elion fell asleep, she stood alone in the darkness of his room. Moonlight brushed the floor. Her hands trembled as she pressed them against her chest, trying to quiet the fear.
When she had collapsed in the forest, it was not by accident.
She had been running.
From herself.
Fragments of memory had returned in sharp flashes. Fire. Screams. A place reduced to silence because she had survived when she should not have.
Where she went, ruin followed.
She remembered holding someone she loved as life faded from their eyes. Remembered being told to never love again. Never stay. Never let her heart attach.
Because people near her did not remain whole.
Elion had been kind. Gentle. Unaware.
That made him dangerous.
Not to her.
To himself.
Each night she stayed, the feeling grew stronger. The pull. The fear. The certainty that loving her would cost him everything.
So she began to pull away.
Not because she wanted distance. Because she needed it.
The morning she decided to leave, she stood at the door and watched him sleep. His face was calm. Unburdened.
She kissed the air near his forehead but did not touch him.
"If I stay," she whispered, "you will lose yourself."
She chose to be cruel so he could survive.
And when she said she did not feel what he felt, the lie nearly broke her.
Outside, the world did not feel safer.
It only felt emptier.
She walked until her legs ached and her vision blurred. Tears burned her eyes, but she did not stop. She could not go back.
Because the moment Elion looked at her, she would stay.
And loving him was the one thing she could never allow herself to do.
Not again.