The war was over.
But peace, as it turned out, was not the same as healing.
Three years had passed since the fall of Xandros. The world had begun to stitch itself back together, slowly and imperfectly. Kingdoms once divided by fear had reached across fractured borders to rebuild what they had lost. The EchoFragments, now dormant, had been scattered across the Realms again—not hidden, but watched over.
And Aria was no longer a girl defined by prophecy. She was simply Aria now.
---
She lived in a quiet village nestled between two hills, where mist rolled down in gentle sheets each morning and deer wandered freely across mossy paths. Her cottage was modest—stone walls, a wooden roof, and a garden where she grew herbs and flowers she barely remembered the names of. The mark on her palm had faded into something pale and quiet, like an old scar with no memory of pain.
Every morning, she fetched water from the stream, chopped firewood, and fed the hens. In the afternoons, she taught the local children how to read, and told stories of a world far away from theirs, of people who once walked between stars and shadows.
But she never spoke of Xandros.
Or the Crucible.
Or the day she had nearly let it all burn.
---
The village loved her, though they didn't truly know her. She was the quiet woman who smiled when spoken to but flinched when the wind howled too loud. The one whose eyes sometimes drifted far off, as if seeing a world no one else could. Children called her Miss Aria. Adults called her wise.
They didn't ask where she came from. And she never told.
One evening, as she sat by the fire whittling a piece of ashwood into something vaguely resembling a bird, a knock came at the door. She stiffened. No one ever knocked at this hour.
She opened it slowly.
Lyrien stood there.
Older.
Taller somehow, though that was impossible.
His silver-blond hair was shorter now, messier. He wore no armor, only a traveler's cloak and boots caked with mud. A scar ran from his left temple down to the corner of his jaw—a new one.
Aria's breath caught.
"Hi," he said, softly.
She stared at him. No words came.
"I… didn't know if you were still here," he added.
She swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. "I was. I am."
"Can I come in?"
She stepped aside.
He entered. The firelight flickered across his face, and for a moment she saw the boy he used to be, standing beside her in the ruins of Thalara. The boy who had bled for her. Fought beside her. Stayed when others would have fled.
"It's nice," he said, glancing around. "Quiet."
"That's why I chose it."
He looked at her, then down at his hands. "I've been traveling. Helping rebuild the southern realms. The old magic left a lot of scars."
"I know."
A pause.
"They still talk about you," he said gently. "All across the Realms. The girl who burned a god from the inside out."
"I'm not that girl anymore."
"No," he agreed. "You're not. But you're still you."
Aria turned away, busying herself with the firewood. Anything to avoid his eyes.
"Why did you come?" she asked finally.
He hesitated. Then stepped closer. "Because I never said goodbye."
Her hands trembled slightly as she placed another log into the flames.
"And because I think I owe you more than that."
---
They sat in silence for a while, the way people do when they carry the weight of too many memories between them. Outside, the wind rustled the trees, and the moon climbed higher.
Lyrien pulled something from his satchel—a folded piece of parchment.
"I found her," he said.
Aria blinked. "Who?"
"Arinthal. Or what's left of her."
The name hit her like a stone to the chest.
"Where?"
"A monastery in the west. The monks say she walked out of the forest one day and collapsed. Her magic's… gone. Her mind too. She remembers names, sometimes. Yours, especially. But she doesn't speak much."
Aria closed her eyes.
"I thought she was dead."
"So did I. But she held on."
Aria rose and walked to the window, looking out across the misty field. Her reflection in the glass looked older than she remembered.
"We should go to her," she said.
Lyrien stood too. "That's why I came."
---
The journey to the monastery took a week.
It felt strange, traveling again. Stranger still to do it beside Lyrien. The road no longer felt like a battlefield, but the ghosts of their past clung to every tree and stone.
They spoke little at first. Then more. Slowly.
He told her about the work in the south, how he had joined a guild of elementalists trying to rebind the shattered leylines. She told him about the children she taught, how one of them had dreams about dragons and another insisted her goat could do spells.
Laughter returned, hesitant but real.
One night, as they camped beneath an old elm, Aria asked, "Do you ever miss it? The fight? The fire?"
Lyrien looked at the stars. "Sometimes. Not the pain. Not the loss. But the purpose. We knew what we were doing back then."
"Do we know now?"
He turned to her. "I think we're still finding out."
---
The monastery sat on a cliff edge, overlooking the sea. A simple place. White stone. No walls. Just peace.
They were greeted by a monk with kind eyes, who recognized Aria the moment he saw her.
"She's in the garden," he said.
Arinthal sat on a bench beneath a tree in bloom. Her once-ebon hair was streaked with gray now. Her robes were plain. She stared at the sea, unmoving.
Aria approached slowly.
"Arinthal?"
The woman turned.
Her eyes widened.
"Aria."
Just the name.
But it was enough.
They embraced.
And for a moment, the years folded in on themselves. The pain, the war, the fire—it all drifted away.
They were just three people, holding on to the pieces of what they'd saved.
---
Later, as the sun dipped low and painted the sea in gold, Aria stood alone at the cliff's edge. Lyrien joined her.
"She remembered you," he said.
Aria nodded. "That means something, right? That some part of her still knows who she is."
"It means everything."
A long silence stretched between them.
Then Aria said, "I think I'm ready. To stop running. To stop hiding."
Lyrien smiled.
"Then let's go home."
"Wherever that is."
He reached for her hand. Not in declaration. Not in romance. Just in solidarity.
"We'll find it. Together."
---
And the wind carried their promise far across the sea.
---