"Garron is dead," Lyrian whispered.
A few moments earlier,
The words drifted like ash into the quiet air, carried off by the wind that moved through the orchard in slow, circling waves. It was morning, though the sun had not fully risen above the eastern hills, and the light filtering through the trees felt pale—distant, as though it too had mourned.
He sat beneath a crooked apple tree, the same one he had planted with Garron fifty years ago. Its roots had split the stone path beside it, and its fruit hung low with the weight of time. Above, the leaves whispered secrets in a language older than man or elf, rustling like memories he couldn't name.
A book rested on his chest, unread. It had been there since dawn. He had turned no pages.
Instead, he stared into the haze of morning, watching the mist slide gently across the orchard floor. The trees seemed endless, though he had walked every path between them. He had counted the stones, the branches, the bees that came each spring. And yet now, with a letter in his hand and silence in his bones, it all felt unfamiliar.
He was alone.
Not the kind of alone that came from solitude—he had chosen that. No, this was something different.
This was the feeling of having outlived something beautiful.
The wind shifted.
He heard it before he saw it—the soft flutter of wings, precise and practiced, descending from the pale sky.
A white-feathered bird glided down, circling once before landing lightly on the stone before him. Its talons clicked against the path. Gold bands shimmered around its ankles. A royal messenger.
Lyrian blinked slowly, as if waking from a long dream.
"…Still using birds?" he murmured. His voice cracked like parchment.
The bird said nothing, as birds are wont to do, but extended its leg. Tied to it was a scroll sealed with silver wax, the insignia of Caelondis pressed deep into the mark.
His breath caught.
He hesitated, then untied it with careful fingers.
The scroll unfurled easily.
The words were few.
> To Lyrian of the Skyreach Mountains,
King Garron, Hero of the West, has passed from this world.
His funeral shall be held under the gaze of the gods at the Temple of Light in Caelondis.
You are summoned, should your soul still remember him.
The scroll dropped from his hands.
For a long time, he simply sat there. The wind moved through the trees. A blossom fell from one of the branches, landing gently on the folded robe draped across his legs.
"Garron…"
He said the name like a wound. Like something he had tried not to say for too many years.
He closed his eyes.
And the memories came, uninvited.
---
The bird was gone.
It had taken flight not long after Lyrian let the scroll slip from his fingers, vanishing into the thinning clouds without a sound. He hadn't watched it leave. His gaze remained fixed on the place it had stood—on the small crack in the stone beneath where its talons had pressed. Something about that crack, like a wrinkle in time, made him feel impossibly tired.
The kind of tired that lives in the marrow of old things.
Eventually, he rose.
His joints moved with slow protest, the way earth shifts after long rain. His cloak hung loose about his frame—greyed from age, the fabric thinning at the hem. Still, there was a dignity to his posture, even as he walked barefoot back through the orchard path, each step pressing lightly into the moss-covered stones.
His cottage waited at the edge of the grove, crooked and quiet.
It had once been a blacksmith's hut, or perhaps a shepherd's shelter—he wasn't sure. When he found it, the walls had been crumbling, the roof open to the stars. But he had mended it in those early years after the war, when he still believed in rest. When Eira was still alive.
A carved wind-chime hung above the doorframe, its branches whittled into gentle curves, engraved with forgotten runes. As he stepped through the doorway, it rang softly behind him—like an echo.
The interior smelled of old parchment, pine resin, and firewood. Dust floated in the still air, glinting where morning light spilled through a cracked shutter.
Everything inside remained untouched.
A low shelf lined with scrolls and books. A half-burned candle. A lopsided table with a handwoven cloth, stained from an old wine spill. A dried sprig of mountain thyme, hanging near the hearth.
And on the shelf, just above the hearthstone, rested the satchel.
Brown leather. Worn. Older than most kings.
He stared at it.
That bag had followed him through thirty-seven battles. Through the snows of Northmere, the salt-hollows of the western coast, the shattered borderlands where stone cried out beneath their boots. It still bore the scratch marks from the time a beast had tried to devour him whole. He had never bothered to clean them.
He reached up slowly and pulled it down.
It was heavier than he remembered.
The flap creaked as he opened it, and the smell of old herbs and smoke spilled out. His hand reached inside. Past the forgotten salves. The cracked healing vials. The tightly-wound bandages still stained with Eira's handwriting—notes on pressure points, counter-curses, remedies for fevers brought by moon-sickness.
He paused.
There, at the bottom.
Something thin. Folded. Pressed flat against the leather base.
His fingers brushed it—and he froze.
He knew it before he lifted it.
A note. Folded four times. The corners soft from age, the edges browned. As he opened it, his breath caught, like he'd been stabbed in the ribs.
The handwriting was faint—but unmistakable.
Eira.
Her pen strokes were delicate, though hurried. As if she'd written it in secret. As if she'd meant for it to be forgotten until the right moment.
> "There's a tree at the edge of the world…
They say it can bring back the dead.
If you find it—tell me what it looks like."
He stood there, unmoving.
The light shifted slightly through the shutters. A bird called in the orchard. But inside that cottage, time held its breath.
Lyrian pressed the note to his chest. His eyes burned, but no tears came.
> "You always wrote like it was a spell," he whispered. "Even when it was just a wish."
He sat down on the floor. The satchel rested beside him, silent with history.
The world outside carried on. The breeze moved the branches. The sun crept slowly higher. But he remained there—folded over a piece of paper. A single thought repeating through him like prayer:
> Garron is dead.
And Eira still waits.
For what, he wasn't sure.
But something in his chest, long dormant, had stirred.
---
He left before noon.
The orchard was silent behind him, save for the rustling leaves and the distant hum of bees tending the last blossoms. He didn't close the door to the cottage. He didn't need to. No one came here.
The satchel was slung over one shoulder, now lighter than it had ever been—though it carried the same weight.
He wore a traveler's cloak, ash-grey and threadbare at the hem, the edges frayed by decades. A staff rested in his right hand—simple, polished oak, worn smooth by use. It wasn't a mage's staff in the traditional sense, but it had walked with him through every age of his life. That was enough.
A breeze stirred as he crossed the ridge overlooking the valley.
He paused.
From this height, he could see the rolling expanse of the Southern Reach—meadows and farmland spread beneath a sky swept with white cloud. Here and there, patches of forest broke the landscape like green islands. In the far distance, faint as a whisper, the towers of Caelondis glimmered beyond the hills.
Forty leagues.
He could have taken a carriage. A spell. A bird's flight. But he walked.
Some things, he believed, required the time between steps.
---
The first village he passed didn't recognize him.
A young woman tending goats nodded politely. A smith barely looked up from his forge. A child ran past chasing a wooden hoop, laughing as if the world had never held war.
He stood at the edge of the well for a moment, taking in the sounds—the creak of a pulley, the sizzle of iron, the smell of bread cooling on a windowsill.
No one asked his name.
He didn't offer it.
A part of him was grateful.
Another part—an old, rusted corner of his soul—ached.
> "Forty years," he murmured as he resumed walking. "And already forgotten."
But he knew that wasn't true.
Statues faded. Songs were rewritten. But memory was not always made of stone and verse.
Sometimes, it lived quietly in the blood of things.
---
By the second day, the landscape began to change.
The road grew narrower. Grass pushed up through the cobblestones. Shrines stood crooked at the crossroads—dedicated to old gods and older heroes. One bore the name of Garron. Another, the sigil of the Hero's Order. The third had no name, only a set of wings carved into the base.
He stopped there.
A candle, long since burned out, sat beside it. Small offerings—dried flowers, a child's wooden pendant, a coin smoothed by years—were scattered at its feet.
No one had lit this shrine in weeks.
He knelt before it anyway.
The carved wings reminded him of Eira's sketches—of her strange obsession with what might lie beyond death, of the myths she used to tell around campfires when the sky was clear and the food was bad.
> "There's always a tree," she once said. "At the edge of every story. Sometimes it blooms. Sometimes it burns. But it's always waiting."
Back then, he thought it was just a metaphor.
Now, he wasn't so sure.
---
That night, he camped beneath a hollowed oak, roots twisted like old fingers reaching toward the stars.
He made no fire. Ate only dry bread and an apple from the orchard.
Sleep didn't come easily.
The sky above was vast. He could hear the river miles away, murmuring like memory. The wind shifted, carrying with it the distant scent of pine, of rain yet to fall.
He closed his eyes.
And in the dark, she came to him.
Eira.
Not as a ghost. Not as a memory. Just her voice—quiet, teasing, laced with the warmth of someone who had once held his hand when the world was ending.
> "Took you long enough," she said.
He didn't speak.
> "You remember that hill?"
"Which one?"
"The one with the ruined tower. You broke your leg jumping off it."
"You pushed me off it."
"And then healed it myself. You never said thank you."
He smiled in the dark.
> "Thank you," he whispered.
The wind moved through the branches like laughter.
---
On the fifth day, the city came into view.
Caelondis.
The last stronghold of the west. Seat of the twin thrones. Where once a girl from the slums became a knight, a boy from the mines became a king, and a half-blood elf stood shoulder to shoulder with legends.
The banners flew above its walls—deep violet, gold-trimmed, embroidered with the wings of the kingdom's crest.
He hadn't seen those colors in decades.
He felt nothing at first. No awe. No dread. Just a strange, low ache. As if some part of him had been bracing for this moment and found it... too familiar.
The guards at the gate gave him puzzled looks but said nothing. His face was not in the records. His name was not on the list of nobles. His arrival made no noise.
But as he passed beneath the shadow of the great gate, the old stones seemed to whisper.
> You're late.
But you came.
He walked on, into the city of memory.
---
The bells of Caelondis tolled once every breath.
Low and mournful, they rang across the marble avenues, through the arched arcades of the city's old quarter, and out across the hills. Each strike lingered like a heartbeat stretched too thin. The sky was dim despite the hour. Clouds hung heavy above the towers.
Lyrian stood beneath the arch of the Temple of Light.
He had been here before.
Not like this.
Back then, it was a victory. They stood on these steps bleeding and laughing, half-dead and younger than they felt. Garron had limped up those stairs with a broken sword, and Alwen dragged a weeping prince behind her. Eira was the last to arrive, half a mile behind, because she'd stopped to bandage a stranger's leg.
That memory hurt.
Now, the great bronze doors of the temple were wide open, and torchlight danced across the alabaster floor within. The hall was vast, columns rising like white trees into a domed sky painted with constellations. The pews were filled. Nobles, priests, knights. Strangers. Mourning him.
> King Garron. Hero of the West.
Lyrian entered without announcement.
No one turned.
Even after all this time, he walked without sound.
---
The coffin lay at the center of the temple, surrounded by silver braziers that burned low with pale flame. Draped in a royal banner and crowned with a garland of highland blooms, the coffin rested on a stone dais etched with ancient runes—those from the war they'd once thought final.
Behind it, six statues stood in varying states of completion.
The Hero's Order.
Garron's was finished—stoic and proud, his blade resting point-down between his boots, his cape caught in an imaginary wind. Beside it, Alwen's statue had only the outline of her robes. Eira's was little more than a block of marble.
And Lyrian's…
Unfinished. Barely shaped. The face half-carved. No eyes.
> Fitting, he thought.
He stepped forward, and only then did a voice stir from the shadows.
> "You're late."
He turned.
Alwen.
Older now. Her hair streaked with frost, her shoulders a little more stooped. But her eyes—sharp as flint, bright as ever. Her hands were folded in the sleeves of a formal court mage's robe, deep violet trimmed in silver. She looked at him for a long moment.
And then she smiled.
> "Still the same cloak?"
He managed a thin smile back. "Still the same sarcasm."
She approached slowly. "He waited for you, you know."
Lyrian lowered his gaze. "I waited for him too. I just didn't know it."
They stood there, a heartbeat apart, in the hush of the temple.
Then a small figure approached—Garron's grandson, no older than ten, dressed in ceremonial blue. He looked up at Lyrian with wide eyes.
> "Mother said you were taller."
Lyrian knelt.
> "She says a lot of things."
The boy frowned in the thoughtful way only children and kings do.
> "Did you really fight a sea titan?"
Lyrian chuckled under his breath. "We mostly ran from it."
From the far pews, Lady Liraine—Garron's daughter—watched them with quiet grace. She rose and approached, hands folded, face calm despite the red around her eyes.
> "He spoke of you every year on his name day," she said. "He said the war ended when the world started believing people like you could exist."
Lyrian didn't know what to say.
So he said nothing.
She glanced at the statue. "He asked them not to finish yours. He said you wouldn't want it."
He looked up at the half-formed face.
> "He was right."
---
The funeral began at sunset.
Priests sang the Lament of the Seven Rivers—the same hymn sung after the battle of Norwen Hold. The same hymn Lyrian heard when Eira died. He did not weep this time. He had wept then, and that memory burned too fresh even after forty years.
Instead, he listened.
To every note.
To every word.
To the silence in between.
And when it was done, and the last of the petals had been strewn at the foot of the dais, the knights stepped forward to carry the coffin.
Out of the temple.
Through the streets.
Toward the Hill of Heroes.
---
It had once been just that—a hill.
No statues, no tombs. Just wind and stars and badly made stew. They'd camped there on the seventh day of their journey, the day Garron found a rabbit and Eira named a star after him. That night, Alwen had drunk too much elven wine and challenged a tree to a duel.
Now it was marble.
Now it was sacred.
The path up the hill was lined with white flowers, and the crowd followed in reverent quiet. Lyrian walked behind the pallbearers. Alwen beside him.
No one spoke.
When they reached the summit, the wind picked up.
The coffin was lowered into the tomb.
And Lyrian fell to his knees.
It was not a performance. Not grief put on for display. It was the cracking of something ancient and silent. The surrender of a man who had lived too long without speaking the names of the dead.
He pressed his forehead to the earth.
And cried for the first time in nine centuries.
---
Alwen did not speak.
She knelt beside him, placing one hand on the hilt of his staff. Not to take it. Just to remind him he was not alone.
The last of the petals scattered in the wind.
The last of the sun dipped below the hills.
And when Lyrian rose again, he looked at the city, and then back to the parchment in his hands.
> Eira's note.
> "There's a tree at the edge of the world," he read aloud. "They say it can bring back the dead."
He didn't care if the others heard.
He wanted them to.
He wanted the world to remember.
Alwen looked at him. "Are you really going to chase a myth?"
He nodded.
> "Not a myth. A promise."
She studied him for a long time. And then, quietly, she reached into her robe and handed him a folded cloth—a map. Old. Fragile. Ink almost faded.
> "The westernmost point of the known world. Beyond the Dusk Wastes. No one's charted it since… Well. Since we were young."
He took it. "You kept this?"
She smiled faintly. "I always knew you'd go."
---
And so, as twilight fell and the stars bloomed above the tomb of a king, Lyrian turned away from the city of Caelondis.
Not because he hated it.
But because the road lay elsewhere.
He looked to the horizon, to the hills that rolled toward silence, and he spoke, not to Alwen, not to the sky—but to her.
> "Wait for me, Eira. I'm coming."
And with that, he walked.
Not as a hero.
Not as a legend.
Just a man who remembered a promise.
And who believed—finally—that it might still be kept.
And with that, Lyrian began his endless journey—toward the tree, the ghosts, and the memory of those he could not forget.