Her orange eyes were still glowing—bright, sharp, fierce—but not cruel.
Not yet.
They shimmered with heat, yes. With frustration. With the raw, lingering sting of abandonment. But beneath all of that, something gentler remained. Something far more human than the warrior's edge she now wore like armor.
She still just wants to be heard.
Even after all this—after the silence he left in his wake, after the years of solitude etched into her blade, after the blood she spilled that he never saw—she looked at him not like a ghost, but like a man who could still answer her.
And that broke something in him deeper than guilt.
Lucavion inhaled, slow and sharp. The breath burned slightly, like it didn't want to settle.
The past won't change.
No matter what he says now, no matter what thoughts churn through his mind—what he did, what he didn't do—it's already carved into both of them.
He left.
And she survived it.
