Six months passed.
Inyocha worked. He rebuilt houses. He dug wells. He carried supplies. He did everything the scarred woman her name was Mara, he learned asked him to do, and he did it without complaint.
The people of the Rust Sea watched him. Waited for him to slip. Waited for the monster to re emerge.
But Inyocha didn't slip.
He was quiet. He was careful. He was trying.
Lee trained with him every day not combat, but meditation. Teaching him to find the light inside himself, the light that had been buried under years of darkness and hunger.
"It's still there," Lee said one morning, as they sat on the roof of the Rust Eel Tavern, watching the sunrise. "Your light. I can see it. Faint. But growing."
"I don't feel it," Inyocha admitted.
"It takes time. Trust takes time. Healing takes time. You spent twelve years in the darkness. You can't expect to find the light overnight."
Inyocha nodded. "How do you stay so hopeful? After everything you've seen. After everything you've lost."
Lee thought about it. About Matron Elise. About the souls of the Sunken City. About the Hollow King, waiting beyond the stars.
"I don't know," he said honestly. "I just... choose to be hopeful. Every morning, I wake up and I choose to believe that today will be better than yesterday. That the world is worth saving. That people are worth loving."
"And if you're wrong?"
Lee smiled. "Then I'll be wrong with my friends beside me. And that's not so bad."
Inyocha was quiet for a long moment.
Then he said, "I want to be like you, Lee. I want to be hopeful. I want to believe."
"Then you will be," Lee said. "Someday. Not today. But someday."
They sat in silence, watching the sun rise over the Rust Sea.
And somewhere, beyond the stars, the Hollow King watched them.
And waited.