The Hollow Flame was gone.
And for the first time in many days, the wind felt real again.
Not poisoned by silence.
Not twisted by memory.
Just clean, sharp air across the Scar.
Eren stood at the edge of the chasm, watching as the last wisps of colorless fire dissolved into nothing. There was no smoke. No remnants. No shadow.
Only absence.
Behind him, the camp moved quietly.
No cheers. No chants. Just breath and bandages. Reclaiming what it meant to be alive.
Syra approached first.
She was limping, her arm freshly wrapped, her blade sheathed but close.
"You stood toe to toe with a ghost."
"I stood with the past," Eren said.
She smirked faintly.
"And didn't let it devour you."
"I nearly did."
"But you didn't."
She looked out across the Scar.
"She's really gone?"
"Yes," Eren replied.
"Not destroyed. Not erased. Just... remembered."
Syra frowned.
"I don't know whether that's more terrifying or beautiful."
Eren glanced down at Akreth, the blade still warm in his palm.
"She was neither monster nor martyr. Just a bearer who lost herself."
He turned from the cliff.
"And now we decide whether to do the same."
By the time Elira arrived, the others had begun gathering around the remains of the field.
The land had quieted.
Birdsong returned thin, cautious.
The ground, once scorched clean of memory, now felt rooted again.
Elira sat beside Eren and placed something between them.
A broken pendant.
"She dropped this when she vanished," Elira said. "It's old. Emberborn craftsmanship."
Eren held it gently in his hand. The stone in the center had cracked in two. One side shimmered faintly. The other side was black as coal.
"It's not a relic," she added. "It's a mirror."
He looked up at her.
"She wasn't trying to consume the world."
"No," Elira said.
"She was trying to make it forget."
He closed his fingers around the pendant.
"She almost succeeded."
They buried the dead before nightfall.
Three from the Ashbound. One from the original scouts. Two more from the ones who had joined along the way.
Each was buried with a stone carved in flame-script.
A name. A memory. A promise.
Elira sang as they worked.
Not a hymn.
Just a soft, wordless melody from her childhood low and slow and full of something too deep for language.
And the valley listened.
That evening, they did not light a pyre.
They built a ring of torches and placed stones between them. Around it, they stood. Not in rank. Not in circle.
Just together.
Eren stepped into the center.
Akreth rested across his back, wrapped in black cloth not to hide but to honor.
"I have no great speech tonight," he began.
"I have no answers."
He paused, letting the silence settle like ash.
"Yureth taught me something in her final act."
"She reminded me that even the ones who fall deepest into flame still remember who they were."
He met the eyes of each person.
"Remembering is a kind of resistance."
A murmur ran through the crowd.
Not noise.
Agreement.
Elira stepped forward.
She placed a stone in the fire's light.
"This is for the ones we couldn't save."
Syra followed.
"This is for the ones we did."
Varn stepped forward slowly.
He held nothing.
But his voice carried far.
"This is for the part of us that feared truth. And now chooses to face it."
One by one, others came.
Each said a name.
Or a word.
Or a sentence.
And when Eren placed his hand on the final stone, he didn't speak.
He simply pressed Akreth's flat edge against it.
The runes glowed softly.
And the stone lit from within.
Later that night, Eren sat alone, staring at the pendant Yureth had left behind.
Elira sat across from him, arms around her knees.
"Do you think we'll have to fight again?"
Eren answered without looking up.
"I think fighting will always be an option."
"But not always the answer," she said.
He nodded.
"We gave her a choice. She took it."
"She vanished."
"She was free."
A long pause stretched between them.
Then Eren looked at her, really looked.
"We're not done."
"No," Elira agreed.
"But for the first time... we're no longer surviving."
He stood.
She followed.
The others had begun to sleep.
But some still watched the stars.
The valley was quiet.
And whole.
And the flame, wrapped in cloth, burned no brighter than the memory they had just made.