POV: Arthur Starlight
The guards didn't speak after that.
Not because of fear—because of uncertainty. You can fight monsters. You can call for help. But how do you respond to something that erases itself the moment it sees you?
Balthen stayed behind me. Always three steps back, eyes unreadable.
"I'll call the High Scholars," he muttered. "This isn't—normal."
He was wrong. It was normal. For me.
I turned away from the overlook, sword still in hand, but it no longer felt like mine. It hummed faintly—like it belonged to another age, another story, one that had merely borrowed me to hold it.
Then the temperature dropped.
Not a chill. A silence. Like grief had entered the garden and didn't want to be noticed.
The sky didn't part. It bruised—a slow ripple of dark lilac and pearl-gray tearing across the dome's enchanted clouds. Threads of nulllight spidered across the air. The flowers in the terraces bowed. The marble hummed.
And she appeared.
Not in a flash. Not with light.
She walked.
Out of the wind that hadn't been blowing. Through a path that hadn't been open.
Widowlight.
She looked like the world had forgotten what to call her. Her white hair fell to her waist, moving as if underwater. Eyes like shattered sapphire—blue, but fractured. Her coat hung regally from sharp shoulders, embroidered with the faded symbols of a hundred dead kingdoms. Her leggings—tight, black, etched with runes that pulsed faintly—made her stride silent but sovereign. And on her back, that blade.
A Riftbeast fang, carved down to swordform.
Not steel. Not magic.
Loss, hardened into a weapon.
She didn't draw it.
She didn't need to.
Even the wind stopped pretending.
Elanor froze beside me. She didn't speak, but I could feel her memories cracking.
Because this was what had never come to save her.
The Riftbeast that destroyed her home hadn't met Widowlight. But this one had.
And it bowed.
That memory wasn't an illusion. It happened. That Riftbeast didn't retreat because of me.
It recognized her.
Widowlight stopped a few feet from me, gaze distant—like she saw through me, into every version of me that ever could be.
Then she spoke.
"Arthur Starlight," she said. Not asked. "It's started, hasn't it?"
I didn't answer.
Because I didn't know what "it" was.
She studied the sword still in my hand.
"That blade shouldn't exist outside the Ash Archives," she whispered. "But then again… neither should you."
Her voice wasn't cruel. It was tired.
She turned. Her silhouette caught the light like a poem written in mourning.
"Don't follow me," she said.
Then vanished.
No step. No portal. Just absence.
The marble where she stood turned darker. Like even the stone knew it had hosted grief.
Elanor exhaled slowly.
I realized, for the first time…
I hadn't.
POV: Elanor Sunshine
She was gone.
No sound. No spell. Not even a ripple of power left behind. Widowlight walked out of the world the same way grief does—slowly at first, then all at once.
I stood there, knees tight, breath shallow.
Arthur hadn't spoken.
He never did—not when it mattered.
But now he looked at me.
Not around me. Not past me.
At me.
That red eye of his, twitching softly like it wasn't watching the world but editing it. That gold one, still and quiet, as if it already knew my question and didn't want to hear it out loud.
I stepped forward.
Just one step. Just enough to break the silence.
"What was that?" I asked. Not the Riftbeast. Not Widowlight. You.
Arthur's hand loosened on the sword. It didn't vanish. It stayed.
That was answer enough.
"You knew it would bow," I said, voice barely above a whisper. "You didn't flinch. You didn't even blink."
He didn't move. But something behind his eyes cracked. Not open. Inward.
"I didn't know," he said finally. "I just… wasn't surprised."
That terrified me more.
Because surprise meant you were still part of the story.
He wasn't.
I stepped closer, until the marble beneath my boots warmed. The garden responded to him—but now it responded to me too. That shouldn't have been possible.
"Arthur," I said, "what are you?"
He looked at me.
And I saw it—just for a moment.
Not fear.
Grief.
Like he already mourned the answer.
"I don't think I'm the one writing anymore," he whispered.
Then he walked past me, sword still in hand, trailing light like a fading chapter.
And I stood there alone, surrounded by the echoes of things not yet said.