The cold had stolen everything from me except sight.
Through the veil of falling snow, she emerged—a wraith of frost and hollow bones, her white hair not a crown but a testament to starvation. Sixteen winters had carved her into angles, her wrists bird-bone thin beneath tattered wraps. A street urchin. A no one. The kind of girl lords stepped over in the capital streets, her existence as inconsequential as breath on the wind.
Yet those grey-blind eyes saw me.
Truly saw me.
Not the Paradox Sovereign. Not the Godslayer. Just a broken man bleeding into the snow.
Her cracked lips trembled. Tears welled in those frosted eyes—not from fear, but from something worse. Recognition. Until I could see the way her tears froze as they fell, crystalline shards of sorrow suspended in time.
When was the last time someone had wept for me? Not for the power, not for the legend—just for the man? Lyria had, before my betrayal left her bones in the ash. Therion had, with his last breath as his sacrifice burned through his veins. But this girl? One whose name or face I didn't even know?
I tried to move. To speak. To something. But my body was no longer mine. The covenant had hollowed me, left me a shattered husk, a puppet with its strings cut.
She stumbled forward, bare feet sinking into the snow. Each step was a battle, her breath ragged puffs in the air, but she didn't stop.
Closer.
Closer.
Until her fingers, calloused and warm, brushed the snow from my face.
Her touch was warm.
Or maybe I was just that cold.
Her lips moved. Words lost to the howling wind—or was it the blood in my ears? I couldn't understand. A prayer? A curse? A plea for me to stay?
I wanted to answer. To tell her to run, to leave this place, to survive where I had failed. But the snow was swallowing me, the cold pulling me under.
The last thing I saw was her face, streaked with frozen tears, her blind eyes seeing more than any seer's ever had.
Then—
Darkness.
Peace.
And the terrible, beautiful realization that in the end, after all the blood and fire and broken oaths...
...someone had mourned me.
And for the first time since Lyria's ashes scattered on the wind, I wanted to live.