They came without fanfare.
Elena Varis arrived first, hands bare, hair streaked with grey she wore proudly. She found Caelum in an old library—one untouched by his empire. He looked up, surprised.
"You read my letter," she said.
"I archived it," he replied.
She smiled. "But you remembered it."
Lyra Finn entered second. She didn't sit. She stood near a shelf filled with rewritten doctrine and slowly placed his original thesis among them. "Truth belongs in context," she whispered. "Even when the author changes."
And then—
Alren.
Taller now. Eyes older. He handed Caelum a journal filled with poems by students in Halron Vale.
One line:
"We know the world because someone once asked it to speak."
Caelum touched the page. "They wrote this?"
Alren nodded. "Because of what you taught us. And in spite of it."
The silence held everything it needed.
No apologies.
No absolution.
Just presence.
Caelum stood. He walked with them out of the library, down the marble steps where statues no longer bore his face. He didn't wear a cloak. No mask. No power draped across his shoulders.
Just a name—
Caelum.
Not Dross.
Not myth.
And in the quiet, someone called out from the crowd:
"You were real before the fire. That's enough."
He didn't reply.
He walked into the city.
And this time, he wasn't followed.