Alaric and Mira
The days after the fall of the Woman passed like echoes from another lifetime. Ridgefall still stood—scarred, half in ruins, but not broken. Fires had been quenched. The people had begun to rebuild. But for Alaric and Mira, victory did not bring peace.
Their journey through the Temple had changed them in ways the others couldn't see.
Alaric, once cold and command-bound, now walked with a weight in his chest that wouldn't lift. Not guilt—but gravity. He had stared into the abyss of what he could become. He had held godlike power in his palm—and let it go. In doing so, he had stepped beyond mere leadership. Now the people didn't just look to him for protection.
They looked to him for direction.
Mira watched him from a distance most days, unsure how to bridge the silence that had grown between them since the Temple. Not of bitterness—but of awe. She had seen into the heart of him during that final confrontation. The boy forged in shadow. The man who chose light. She had known he was powerful. But only now did she understand how much of that power he refused to use, simply because it might cost someone else.
They camped in the Vale of Dawns, a quiet ravine south of the Ridgefall cliffs, where a natural spring bubbled and the sky was always open. Here, they could speak freely. Here, they could breathe without the weight of being watched.
Mira sat beside him as the sun dipped behind the high trees. "You haven't slept."
"I don't sleep like I used to," Alaric said quietly, his voice distant. "Not since the Temple."
"You're afraid of what you'll see?"
"I'm afraid of who I'll see." He looked at her. "You. Caelen. My mother. Myself—if I'd made different choices."
Mira shifted closer, laying her hand on his. "You chose right."
He didn't answer immediately. Then, softly, "That doesn't mean I didn't want the wrong thing."
She squeezed his hand. "And yet, you still walked away."
A silence passed between them, heavy and full of meaning.
"I'm not the same," Mira whispered. "Something of her still lingers. I feel it when I dreamwalk. Like her echo, waiting to slip back in."
"You won't let her."
"I'm not sure it's about letting or not. I think we're marked now. Touched by what was before time."
"Then we guard each other," Alaric said. "You guard my soul. I guard yours."
Their eyes locked, the firelight flickering between them. For the first time since the battle, they both allowed themselves a moment of stillness—not warriors, not leaders, just two people bound by fire, shadow, and a future neither had asked for but both had claimed.
Mira leaned against him, her head resting on his shoulder. "What happens next?"
"We rebuild. We search for others like us. We prepare for what may come."
"You think it's not over?"
Alaric looked up to the stars. "The Woman was a piece. A shadow of something older. And now that the world knows we can fight back... it won't go unnoticed."
Mira nodded. "Then we learn. We grow. And next time, we start ready."
Behind them, the embers of the campfire crackled gently. Above them, the stars pulsed faintly—not in warning, but in promise.
Together, Alaric and Mira sat in the darkness that had once threatened to consume them.
And they did not flinch.