The horizon shimmered where light met possibility—an infinite expanse where nothing was fixed, yet everything remembered.
Leon stopped for a moment at the crest of a crystalline ridge. The surface beneath him wasn't stone or soil but living resonance, shifting in slow, gentle pulses like the breath of a sleeping world. He glanced back. The others were laughing softly—Milim chasing after Liliana's weaving threads like a child chasing fireflies, Naval and Roselia arguing quietly about whether the aurora overhead was a spectrum or a symphony.
For the first time in what felt like eternity, there was no fight to win, no trial waiting beyond the next threshold. Only… beginning.
A soft hum rippled through the air, like a voice forming words without sound. Leon turned his gaze upward—and for an instant, he thought he saw faces in the aurora. Not ghosts, not memories, but presences—those who had ascended, who had become part of the Chorus. They watched with warmth, not judgment.
