Chapter Eight – We Do Not Forget
Part Four – The Day He Watched Them Live Without Him
The flame had burned down to coals.
Selka hadn't moved. She sat across from him, knees drawn in, watching the light dance across Zephryn's face as if trying to memorize what six years had done to him.
He looked thinner. Quieter. But not fragile.
Not broken.
Just… cauterized.
She spoke first.
"What did you see?"
Zephryn's eyes didn't rise from the ember-glow.
"Everything."
He remembered the way the outer Lyceum wall curved—soft stone bent by time and layered with pulse glyphs too old to still glow, but too sacred to erase. He remembered walking beside it with no intention of being seen. Just close enough to hear if the Veil still hummed.
"I didn't mean to get that far," he said. "I only wanted to see it. That's all."
He had walked beside the old orchard where they used to train.
The place Solara first taught him how to breathe through fear.
The place he last saw Kaelen standing with bruised knuckles and a cracked sword, shouting at a wall because shouting at people hurt too much.
"Kaelen was alone. For once. And still—he looked like he was holding the entire world together."
"He always does," Selka murmured.
Zephryn smiled faintly. A crack in the silence.
"Yolti passed by. She was laughing."
His voice faltered a little.
"Not the old laugh. Not the small one she used when Solara would tease her. This one was… louder."
"Like she didn't need to remember anything when she laughed like that."
Selka stayed still.
"And then I saw you."
His eyes rose, slow and fragile, like a memory unfolding for the first time.
"You were sparring. Your stance was wrong."
Selka tilted her head, not sure whether to speak.
"Not because you forgot. But because you weren't mimicking her anymore."
Her breath caught.
He watched her.
"You weren't trying to be her. You were trying to be you."
He reached the gate the next day.
Stood across the clearing. Just beyond the field where the Lyceum guards trained.
"I held the crystal Kaelen gave me. The one I kept hidden. The one that still hummed when I thought of the past."
He didn't know why he stopped.
Until he felt it.
"It was like pressure in my ears. A hum through the grass. A voice behind my spine."
A single word:
"Zephryn."
He paused, throat tightening.
"It wasn't shouted. It wasn't cast. It was threaded. Through the wind. Through the hum."
"The Choir had found me."
Selka sat up straighter. "Did they follow?"
"No. That's the thing. They didn't come. They didn't need to."
"They just let me know. That they still could."
He looked down at the ground between them.
"And that if I stepped forward…"
He didn't finish.
Selka did.
"You would've brought the war back to the ones trying to forget."
He nodded once.
"Did you want to be seen?" she asked.
He didn't answer right away.
The fire cracked gently.
"I think I wanted to be remembered," he finally said. "But not by everyone."
Selka tilted her head.
"Who, then?"
"Just the ones who buried her."
The wind outside the hollow rustled through the trees again.
The flame burned lower, not dying—just shifting.
Selka leaned forward, arms on her knees, voice quieter now.
"You watched us live.
But we weren't living, Zephryn.
We were surviving."
He looked at her.
"We needed you."
Another silence.
"I needed you."
He blinked. For a second, he looked like the boy she remembered.
Not the myth.
Not the weapon.
Just him.
"I didn't know I could still be needed."
"Then you're not remembering right."