The fire crackled low, casting soft light on Kael's face as he sat across from Seris. Between them, the flames whispered, their voices quieter than the Vale's sighs but warmer, more alive. The air was thick with the lingering scent of smoke and burial ash, and though the Hall of Accord now lay behind them, its ghosts had followed. Not in shape or shadow, but in silence. A silence that clung to their skin, weighted their limbs.
Seris sat curled in Kael's cloak, the silver circlet now resting in her lap. She had not put it on since retrieving it. It gleamed dully in the firelight, cold and heavy. Her fingers brushed its edge absently, as if unsure whether it was a relic or a wound.
"I don't remember it feeling this heavy," she murmured, not looking up.
Kael raised his eyes from the fire. "Maybe it wasn't, back then."
"Or maybe I was stronger."
A pause. Then Kael said, softly, "You still are."
She glanced up at him, lips twitching into the barest trace of a smile. "Flattery, Kael? That's not like you."
He shrugged, a slow lift of his shoulders. "It's not flattery if it's true."
A silence fell again, gentler now, less like a wall, more like a veil. Seris shifted closer to the fire, her boots tucked beneath her. "Do you ever wonder if we made the wrong choice?" she asked. "Fleeing instead of falling with them."Kael's eyes darkened. "Every day."
He looked away then, toward the edge of their firelight where the shadows gathered like watchful beasts. "But I also wonder… if surviving is how we honor them. If maybe one of us has to carry it, what they lost, what they hoped for."
Seris's gaze dropped to the circlet. "It should have been someone better."
"Better than you?" Kael met her eyes again. "There was never anyone better."
The fire popped, spitting a stray ember that flickered between them and vanished. Seris blinked, her throat tightening. "You sound like you remember her," she whispered. "The one I used to be."
"I remember enough to miss her." His voice cracked around the edges. "And I see her every time you stop pretending to be cold."
Seris inhaled sharply. She wanted to answer with a quip, a jab, anything to deflect the tremor in her chest, but nothing came. Instead, she leaned forward, placing the circlet gently beside the fire.
"Do you remember," she said, voice lower now, "the cliff above the Singing Lake?"
Kael's eyes flickered with recognition.
"You met me there," she continued. "I wasn't supposed to. I wasn't allowed to. But you waited anyway."
"I would've waited forever."
The words struck something deep in her, something fragile and unhealed. Her fingers curled into her cloak, pulling it tighter. "We were different then," she whispered. "You were fire, and I was frost."
"And we still burned," he said.
She smiled, eyes shining. "That was the first time you kissed me."
Kael's jaw tensed, and the memory stole the breath from his lungs. "You wore blue," he said hoarsely. "And you cried afterward."
"I was afraid," Seris admitted. "Of losing myself. Of losing everything."
"You didn't," he said. "You just gave some of it to me."
She was silent for a moment. Then she shifted again, slowly, until her hand reached out across the space between them and touched his.
Kael didn't flinch. He turned his palm upward and laced their fingers.
"I don't want to keep running," she said, voice so quiet he had to lean forward to hear. "But I don't want to stop either, not here, not yet."
"We won't," Kael said. "But tonight, we can rest. Just for a little while."
They sat there for a long time, hand in hand, letting the night breathe around them. The fire burned lower, throwing long shadows across the broken stones.
When Seris finally rested her head on Kael's shoulder, he didn't move. His breath slowed. So did hers.
The ghosts, for once, stayed quiet.
Later, after sleep had begun to settle over them like soft moss, a sound stirred in the trees.
Kael's eyes opened.
It wasn't loud, just a click, then a faint shuffle, like something being dragged across stone.
He rose without waking Seris, easing her gently to the cloak's warmth. His hand slid to his blade. Barefoot, careful, he moved to the edge of the clearing.
Nothing. He waited.
Then, just past the trees was a mark, faint, but there: etched into the bark of a gnarled old pine was an old twisted spiral.
He touched it and it pulsed with warmth, catching his breath.
It was an old magic, sigil of calling.
Behind him, the fire hissed.
Seris stirred in the firelight, her eyes half-lidded, and reached out without opening them fully. Her hand found Kael's knee, resting there gently. "Do you ever think about what we'd be, if the world hadn't broken?" she asked, voice blurred with sleep and sorrow.
Kael didn't answer at once. His gaze remained fixed on the fire, its light carving shadows across the planes of his face. Then he said, quietly, "I try not to because it hurts too much." Opening her eyes. "Even to imagine?"
"Yes," he whispered. "Because I see it too clearly. I see you in white, crowned under moonlight, myself walking toward you, as the man I was meant to be, no blood, no ash. Just… you."
Seris blinked hard, her throat tightening. "And what do I see?"
He looked down at her then. "You see someone who never stopped choosing you, in every world, every ruin even when I wasn't supposed to."
Her breath shuddered out, and she reached up, brushing her fingers along his jaw. "I don't know how to carry both love and vengeance," she admitted. "I don't know who I become when I stop being angry."
Kael leaned in, forehead brushing hers. "Then let yourself become someone new. We'll find out together."
Their lips met, slow, tentative, like testing the edges of an old wound. But it wasn't pain they found this time, it was warmth.
When they parted, Seris buried her face in his shoulder, and Kael rested his chin against her hair.
The wind sighed through the trees, the fire crackled lower.
And somewhere deep in the forest, something watched them, unblinking, waiting.