The banners no longer bore swords. No crests of vengeance. No blood-colored emblems.
Emerald City had changed.
Children laughed again.
Merchants sang songs of prosperity in the square where battles had once painted the walls red.
Jayden stood on the balcony of what used to be the Hall of Power. Now, it was just a library. His library.
He wore no crown. No titles. Just linen and quiet eyes.
Maggy leaned on the rail beside him, tossing a coin she didn't need.
> "One year," she said.
> "Feels like a lifetime," Jayden replied.
> "You ever think of wearing it? The crown?"
Jayden didn't look at her.
> "I think... the moment I wanted it was the moment I didn't deserve it."
She smiled.
> "Good answer."
---
She didn't leave a note.
Just a silver dagger on Jayden's desk and a pressed lavender flower between two pages of his book.
Her handwriting appeared in the margins.
> "A queen without a kingdom is just a woman. And I think I finally want to be that."
No one knew where she went. Some said the North. Others, the desert cities.
Jayden read her note a hundred times, then placed it into a book labeled Freedom.
He didn't cry.
He didn't smile.
He just remembered.
---
Mira's bakery had three things: bad chairs, perfect cinnamon rolls, and laughter that cracked the walls.
That day, they all returned — Tielen, Jeff, Linet, Wendy.
No armies. No armor.
Just friends.
> "Remember when Linet almost burned the enemy's treasury?" Mira joked.
> "That was strategy!" Linet barked.
> "You were drunk and had a torch," Jeff added.
They laughed until their stomachs hurt.
Jayden sat at the corner table, holding a cup of hot chocolate.
> "We won," he said suddenly.
Everyone fell silent.
Tielen raised his glass.
> "To survival."
> "To pain."
> "To all the versions of us who never got this moment," Mira whispered.
They clinked glasses.
And in that small, imperfect bakery — history exhaled.
---
That night, as rain drummed on the windowpanes, Maggy knocked on Jayden's door.
He opened it half-asleep.
She didn't speak.
Just entered. Sat on his couch. And looked at him with eyes she had hidden for too long.
> "I stayed because of you."
Jayden didn't move.
> "I watched kingdoms burn, Jayden. Friends die. You lose yourself. But I stayed. Not for the fight. Not for the glory."
He sat beside her.
> "Then why?"
> "Because I knew... if we survived, I'd regret not telling you."
She leaned in. Kissed him — not with desperation, but with peace.
And for once, Jayden didn't pull away.
---
Weeks later, Jayden received a letter.
It was sealed with black wax.
Inside was a single phrase:
> "The world may forget what we did... but not what we changed." — Bernardo.
Jayden closed his eyes. The voice of his father — still etched in the walls of his mind — whispered through time.
He went to the sea that day.
Alone.
And scattered ashes into the waves.
> "Rest now," he said. "I carried it all."
---
There was no parade.
No grand ending.
Just the quiet buzz of market mornings, children playing in alleyways, and couples fighting over grocery prices.
Peace didn't shout.
It whispered.
Jayden became the man who fixed roofs, who taught literature, who listened more than he spoke.
The city healed because he stopped trying to fix it.
And finally began to live in it.
---
Jayden sat under the old olive tree with a notebook on his lap.
He wrote:
> "This is not a story of heroes. Or monsters. It is not a tale of crowns or wars. It is about people. Flawed. Beautiful. Broken. Alive.
> And maybe that's enough."
Maggy brought him tea.
He looked at her and smiled.
> "I think I'm done writing."
She sat beside him.
> "Good. Maybe now... we write something together."
And as the wind rustled the pages of his journal...
The story ended.
THE END
---
Author: Jackim ochieng