The sky above the forest had shifted to a softer hue, caught somewhere between night and dawn. It wasn't just the time—it was everything. The air, the silence, even the way the trees breathed. Amara felt it with every step she took beside Liora: something had ended, and something else—fragile, new—had begun.
But not all things healed with light. Some pain waited in the shadows, quiet and patient.
"I keep wondering if it will stay," Liora said quietly. "This... peace. This warmth."
They were sitting on a moss-covered log near the Firelight Tree, its petals now dimmed to a sleepy gold. Liora's head rested against Amara's shoulder, and Amara traced circles on her palm with her thumb, small and soothing.
"It might not," Amara answered honestly. "But we can."
Liora looked up at her. "Even with everything we've remembered?"
Amara met her gaze, not flinching. "Especially because of it."
Liora smiled softly, but the corner of her mouth twitched with something unreadable—fear or doubt or both.
"There's one more place I haven't gone back to," Liora admitted. "A memory I've kept buried so deep even the maze didn't show it."
Amara didn't speak. She waited, giving Liora space.
"It's the night after I ran. The night the forest spoke to me."
Amara's breath caught. "You mean—when the magic changed?"
Liora nodded. "It didn't just change around me. It changed me. And it warned me that love could be a wound. That if I didn't protect the one I loved… you… I would lose everything."
Amara turned toward her, heart tight. "So it scared you."
"It did more than that," Liora said. "It hurt me. It gave me a vision. One where I watched you forget me completely."
A pause.
"I saw you fall in love with someone else," Liora whispered. "And in the vision… you were happy."
Amara's lips parted, but no words came.
Liora continued, voice trembling. "It made me think the kindest thing I could do was disappear. So you could find that version of your life."
Amara pulled her close, burying her face in Liora's hair. "But that's not real."
"I know that now," Liora whispered. "But the pain of it… it waits. Even when I smile. Even when I'm with you."
Silence wrapped around them again, but it was different now. It wasn't distance—it was shelter.
Amara leaned back just enough to see her face. "Then let me carry some of it."
Liora blinked. "What?"
"You don't have to hold that pain alone anymore," Amara said. "If it waits, then let it wait beside both of us. We'll visit it when we have to. But we won't live in it."
Tears welled in Liora's eyes, not because she was breaking—but because something inside her had finally been seen.
"You always find the right words," she said, a watery smile forming. "Even when the forest didn't."
Amara kissed her forehead. "That's because I'm not the forest. I'm just… me. And I choose you."
The firelight tree flickered, soft and warm, as if affirming that choice.
They stayed like that for a while, letting the morning settle around them.
Later, when they rose to leave, Liora turned one last time toward the tree. "Do you think magic can forgive?"
Amara laced their fingers. "I think it already has."
As they walked hand in hand back through the quiet woods, Amara glanced at the path ahead—the familiar one that would lead them toward the village, toward whatever came next.
Behind them, a golden petal drifted down, landing gently on the path.
The pain might still wait.
But so would love.
And this time, they were not afraid to walk forward.