Shimmer and Runner sat close together, shoulders touching, staring out at the starless clouds outside the ORS. The moon was their ceiling. They could actually see Spheraphase, far ahead. Their small frames were wrapped in long cloaks that had once belonged to him.
That was where Adelasta found them.
She approached slowly, her footsteps soft on the cracked stone path, the hem of her black robe fluttering gently behind her. Her hands were folded behind her back, but her eyes were watching them.
They didn't turn to look at her. They knew she was there But they kept staring into the clouds, waiting for something that would never return. Adelasta stopped a few feet away and spoke gently.
"How are you two holding up?"
A long silence prevailed before Runner spoke without turning her head.
"We're not going back with you."
The words hit like a boulder.
"…What?"
Shimmer looked down at her hands, clasped tightly in her lap.
"We decided. We're not going back to the present. We belong here… in the past."
"You—" Adelasta took a step closer, stunned. "You can't mean that. This isn't... this isn't normal."
Runner finally turned her head, her eyes locking onto Adelasta's with a kind of maturity that was chilling in a child.
"Dad wasn't normal either."
Adelasta's lips parted.
"He saved me from an avalanche. I was lost. I was freezing. I'd given up but then he found me. He carried me all the way down a mountain even though he did not have to. And then he gave me a home."
Shimmer nodded slowly, her gaze now rising to meet the stars. Her voice was quiet. Barely a breath.
"My mother was Erna. She's gone now too. My siblings are dead. My father was the only family I had left. And now…"
She paused, clutching the blue fabric tighter.
"Now he's gone too."
Adelasta's hands curled into fists.
"That's not a reason to isolate yourselves. That's—"
"We're not isolating," Runner said, interrupting. "We're staying."
Shimmer nodded again. " We will be here on the moon. In the Halo Islands. This was the last place he smiled."
Adelasta took a long, slow breath.
"You're children."
"We're his children," Runner corrected softly. "And he always said we had the right to choose. And we are Divine, thanks to the Epoch Cycle."
Adelasta's chest rose and fell, her jaw clenched as she looked at them both. She wanted to protest. She should have protested. This wasn't how time worked. This wasn't how it was supposed to end.
But then, Shimmer tilted her head toward her and asked a question that caught her completely off guard.
"…Why are you the calmest of all of us?"
Adelasta looked down at them. She didn't answer right away. Instead, she turned her gaze to the second moon above, her hands finally loosening.
"…Because it's the only thing keeping me sane."
The admission slipped from her mouth like venom.
"I feel like I'm standing on glass and if I crack even once, I won't stop falling. I'll tear apart everything around me and I'll take all of you with me."
Her voice lowered.
"I want to kill Narisva."
Shimmer and Runner looked up sharply.
"I want to rip into her for not protecting him. For being so powerful and still not stopping it. For standing there and letting him burn himself into nothing while she kept living."
She closed her eyes, tears gathering in the corners despite herself.
"But then I look at her. And she's already dead inside. She's... she's not even Narisva anymore, just a marionette walking in a Divine body. And I remember…"
She inhaled sharply.
"I remember how much he loved her. How much he believed in her. And if he could forgive her... if he gave up everything just to save her... then I can't destroy what's left of her."
Her voice shook.
"It's not mercy. It's not kindness. It's just respect for him. That's all I have left."
They sat in silence after that. Adelasta looked toward the valley below.
"We can't bring his body to the present. It wouldn't be right. His grave should be where he reached his peak and his soul shined the brightest."
The two girls looked toward the spire.
"I'll bury him there," Adelasta said softly. "With armor, glaive, and name."
Shimmer stood, taking Runner's hand. They both looked at Adelasta.
"Can we carve his name into the stone?" Shimmer asked.
Adelasta's lips quivered but she smiled. It was a real, small, painful smile.
"Yes. We'll carve it together."
And as the three of them turned to face the spire, the sky broke for just a moment and one single star pierced the clouds.
-------
At the base of the spire hours later, under a sky that had long since abandoned its stars, they gathered.
Five thousand Minafallen students, clothed in ceremonial gray robes stitched with silver thread, stood in perfect silence. They were arranged in concentric circles around the raised platform, heads bowed. Every single one had been touched by the hands of the man whose body now lay in stillness.
Behind them stood the Seventh Enlightenment, cloaked in black with golden hoods. And closest to the platform at the very front were Phaenora, arms folded over her chest to keep herself from trembling, eyes never leaving the coffin; Shimmer, standing tall with her fists clenched and her face streaked with tears she refused to wipe away; and Runner, whose fingers were locked around a cloak Vastarael had once gifted her.
And at the center of them all was a sapphire coffin. Inside, Vastarael Richinaria lay untouched by decay.
His long white hair was braided over his chest, his hands crossed beneath it. He wore ceremonial Aeterium armor reforged from his own essence and his glaive, Calimostria, was folded beside him, inert for the first time in its life. A faint smile graced his lips, as if he were merely dreaming.
But he wasn't. From the steps of the platform, Natalis Andelaris stepped forward.
Her long white robes flowed behind her. Her golden hair was braided. Her angel wings retracted but faintly glowing. She held a single strand of Fitalle Threads in her hand, a blue-silver cord.
She looked at the crowd and raised her voice.
"On the fourth year of the world, after the stars were born and the winds were named, a woman knelt by her husband's grave. She had no words to say, only grief. But the sky could not carry her sorrow. So she created something that could."
"Her name was Ermona, The First Woman, The Mother of Mourning. She sang a song from her womb. It bent the skies. It stopped the seas. It pulled gods to their knees. This was the Fitalle Ermona, a song for those who gave everything. A requiem for the ones who shaped fate… and left before their time."
"Tonight, we offer it to him. To Vastarael Richinaria… the Divine who did not run from death. The father, the protector, the flame of power and the strength of the Aeterium. May the stars hear us. May the gods remember."
She stepped aside.
Denisia Andelaris took the stage, garbed in twilight blue robes, her golden hair pinned back beneath a veil of silver netting. In her hand, she held a slender Ceremonial Staff, its tip adorned with dozens of tiny silver bells. As she walked, they chimed with haunting clarity.
She raised the staff and the moment the first chime echoed across the mountain, the choir began.
The Fitalle Ermona was not in any language spoken in Spheraphase. It was older than speech. The notes curled and trembled in the air, high and haunting, then deep and bone-shaking. The singers stood in tiers on the outer edges. And as it played, the very air changed.
Wind coiled in reverse, spiraling around the sapphire coffin. The spire's runes began to glow in synchronization with the harmonics of the chant. A wave of white light rose up from the earth beneath them with memory. His memory.
Moments flashed between notes:
Vastarael training Shimmer on a moonlit courtyard.
Vastarael carrying Runner through a blizzard.
Vastarael standing beside Phaenora, quietly fixing her hair.
Vastarael laughing once—just once—when Elyonari called him "too stiff for an Aeterium."
Vastarael kissing Adelasta's forehead in their room.
The music wept in tandem with the world. Natalis stepped forward again, raising the thread in her hand.
"This thread represents his soul. It is not gone, it is simply elsewhere. When the world weeps enough and the stars shine again, the thread will return, knotted to a new heart. But until then… we release it."
She released the thread.
It hovered in the air, then dissolved into a hundred strands of light, scattering across the sky like fleeing fireflies. The song reached its peak. Denisia struck the ground with her staff once, a deep gong that trembled through bone and mountain.
And the bells rang louder. The music stopped and the coffin began to rise slowly up the spire. It ascended higher and higher until it reached the flat pinnacle. There, the sapphire coffin turned upright and the runes around it locked in place.
A single phrase appeared, glowing in soft azure.
"Here lies Vastarael Richinaria, The Handsome Prince."
The coffin pulsed with blue light once then settled into the stone.