The ember in Kaelen's palm finally faded. Not to blackness, but to a soft gold mark on his skin—like a scar from light.
He closed his fingers around it.
"She's not gone," he whispered.
"She's… anchored."
Ashrel stood beside him, leaning on his sword. The flames had gone out. The Severers were gone. Even the sky felt different.
Quieter.
Not healed.
But resting.
"So," Ashrel said, "what now?"
Davin walked forward, running a hand through the air where the tear in the Loom had been. It shimmered faintly—still damaged, but no longer unraveling.
"Now?" he said.
"Now we start again."
Weeks passed.
Not all was well.
The eastern city of Seroth still burned. The Weavers' strongholds stood silent, their loom-engines cold and coiled in dust. Not all Severers had crumbled—some had merely wandered, hollow-eyed, into the wilds. People whispered of them, still speaking in forgotten tongues, seeking names no one dared say aloud.
But the war was over.
The pattern held.
Kaelen returned to the city of Myris.
He stood before the ruins of the tower where Lira had once trained. Her staff still lay at its base, cracked but unbroken.
He picked it up and placed it beside the memorial wall, where names of the lost were etched in flame-thread.
He added hers—not her full title, not "Vale" or "Seer" or "Keeper."
Just Lira.
Because that was the part of her he most wanted the world to remember.
Ashrel vanished into the north.
Some said he went to find the broken Severers. Some said he went to build a school—one not for memory, but for meaning.
Others whispered he'd gone to speak with dragons, if any still lived.
Whatever the truth, he left behind his blade and a note:
"What we kill says little. What we choose to teach—that's the story worth telling."
Davin stayed behind.
The new council looked to him, unsure. He'd once walked with Severers. He'd once rewritten fate. Now he taught children to speak in the old tongue, and gently, to forget.
Not to bury pain.
But to let it rest.
He never told anyone the name he had nearly given up.
But sometimes, when the stars aligned, he would whisper it into the wind.
And listen for a voice that never quite answered.
Kaelen took up no sword again.
He farmed. He sang. He walked by the river.
And some nights, when the fire burned low, he saw her.
Not as a ghost. Not as flame.
Just Lira.
Smiling.
Watching.
"I'll hold this story for us both," he would say aloud.
And the ember on his hand would warm, just slightly.
In the south, a garden bloomed where the battle had burned hottest.
No one planted it.
It grew wild, roots thick with memory. Flowers that whispered in the wind. Trees whose leaves held the shapes of names.
They called it The Ember Grove.
No fire burned there.
But if you listened closely…
You could hear stories being born.